As soon as there seems to be an appearance of a military occupation in a democracy, it is high time that tough questions should be asked. The deployment of CRPF in West Bengal for the upcoming Assembly Elections in 2026 is definitely not an ordinary security operation but a very special move towards establishing supremacy of the center over the elected government in the state. Under the orders of the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, the Ministry of Home Affairs has approved the introduction of as many as 2,550 companies of central armed forces 2,550 companies of Central Armed Forces such as CRPF, BSF, CISF, ITBP, and SSB into a state whose responsibility regarding law and order lies with its elected government.
The use of central forces has always been in relation to elections for the purpose of security. However, this time round the distinction lies in how blatant and shameless the BJP government has been in using the central forces as a political tool. The central forces were sent to Bengal even before election dates were formally announced .This has never been done before, and hence this action showed that the use of central forces in West Bengal was purely out of politics, not any security concern.
The signs of Modi’s agenda can be seen here at every step. It should not be forgotten that those districts which are getting maximum numbers of CRPF North 24 Parganas, Murshidabad and the bordering districts are areas where there are sizable Muslim communities and solid bases for the TMC party. It is evident that Modi’s agenda in Bengal has been all along communal polarization, and such a selective deployment of central forces sends an ominous warning to the minorities about the discriminatory use of federal powers. BJP’s own manifesto promises of implementing the Uniform Civil Code within six months of assuming power in its manifesto.
Alongside the brute force, there has been a deliberate misinformation effort, and the CRPF has played a crucial role in this effort. Videos were shared on BJP-affiliated social media accounts in which the CRPF was supposedly “dragging out goons” in Bengal and the caption for the video made it clear that their objective was “to topple Muslim rule with Hindu rule.” Fact-checkers established that these widely circulating videos contained actually footage from protests in Bangladesh, deliberately used to create communal hysteria ahead of voting day. In this regard, this misinformation effort has a distinct purpose to project the use of CRPF as a victory for Hindu nationalism to mobilize BJP’s base against minorities, who will be too intimidated by this process to vote.
The legal aspects of this crisis need to be considered carefully. Law and order is a State subject under the Indian Constitution, and the Government of Bengal has the full legal right to control the functioning of its own police services. However, it is a known fact that the officials in Bengal have raised concerns about the deployment of CRPF forces, citing that there was a discrepancy between actual security requirements in some districts and their force deployment levels. By deciding to permit central forces to be deployed beyond the purview of the state police command system, the Election Commission has set a precedent for an unhealthy form of federalism in India, where a central force will take orders from the federal government in a State run by the opposition party.
This is not an isolated case; this is a well-planned strategy of democracy sabotage, which begins by disenfranchising millions of voters through the dubious SIR process, followed by deploying thousands of CRPF personnel to intimidate the electorate, disseminate misinformation via subservient media, and present the face of free and fair elections. Narendra Modi has mastered the technique of utilizing the machinery of democracy such as the Election Commission, Home Ministry, and central armed forces for his own end of sabotaging democracy from within. What Bengal needs is an actual election, not a staged one. While there is a thin line between an election and an occupation in terms of the forces deployed, the intentions of deploying them make all the difference. When the deployment of forces itself bears the hallmark of being used for political warfare, then what Bengal witnesses in 2026 is nothing but the subversion of democracy.