What began in 2011 as TMC’s promise of ‘poriborton’ has, according to the BJP, degenerated into 15 years of scandals, patronage, and institutional decay. From the Saradha and Rose Valley collapses to the Narada sting and the SSC recruitment scam, Bengal’s political story is now being cast as a courtroom drama in which voters will decide whether TMC’s long rule amounts to governance — or grand larceny.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!For nearly 15 years, West Bengal has lived under two contrasting political banners that, critics argue, have come to resemble each other in one essential respect: the centrality of patronage, political control, and corruption to the state’s functioning.
The first era belonged to the Left Front, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which governed from 1977 to 2011. The second began in 2011, when Mamata Banerjee and the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) stormed to power on the promise of ‘Poriborton’ (change).
Today, as the BJP seeks to expand its influence in Bengal, its central message is blunt: the state does not need another slogan. It needs liberation from what the saffron party calls a deeply entrenched culture of kleptocracy.
This is the story of how corruption evolved in West Bengal—from cadre-controlled institutional patronage under the Left to what opponents describe as a more personalised, transactional, and populist model under the TMC.
On May 9, West Bengal’s political theatre witnessed an unexpected twist when Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari delivered a blistering diatribe against the TMC. Speaking in an open meeting attended by reporters, he tore into what he described as the pervasive rot of corruption and administrative decay festering across the state’s municipalities and urban centres.
His remarks cut to the heart of a deeper malaise that has shaped West Bengal’s politics for more than a decade. From the waning years of the 34-year Left Front regime led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to the rise and consolidation of Mamata Banerjee’s TMC, corruption in Bengal has not disappeared; it has merely changed form.
Under the Left Front, corruption was often viewed as institutionalised and tightly controlled, operating through a disciplined, party-centric apparatus where jobs, contracts, and government favours were dispensed through an organised political network. Under the TMC, that model evolved into something more fluid and personal—a decentralised system of power where loyalty became currency, influence was monetised, and welfare, patronage, and political allegiance were woven into a single transactional web.
The scandals that punctuated this period read like chapters in a dark political epic. The collapse of the Saradha and Rose Valley Groups exposed how lakhs of small investors were lured into Ponzi schemes that devoured their life savings and shattered trust. The Narada Sting Operation captured alleged cash-for-favour transactions on camera, turning whispered allegations into a televised spectacle. Investigations into illegal coal mining and cattle smuggling revealed the contours of a shadow economy in which politics, crime, and money appeared to move in lockstep.
The consequences have reached far beyond the courtroom and the campaign trail. Corruption has hollowed out governance, weakened public institutions, and cast a long shadow over Bengal’s economic aspirations. Investor confidence has been dented, meritocracy has come under strain, and public faith in the system’s fairness has steadily eroded. In a state once celebrated as India’s intellectual and moral vanguard, the central political question now confronting Bengal is stark: can it break free from a culture where power too often serves as a gateway to private enrichment rather than public service?
THE RED FORTRESS: CONTROL BEFORE COLLAPSE
The Left Front’s 34-year rule reshaped Bengal’s political and social landscape. Through land reforms and the strengthening of panchayats, it built a formidable rural base. But over time, critics argued, party and government became nearly indistinguishable.
Jobs, contracts, educational appointments, and welfare access increasingly flowed through party channels. Local committees often served as gatekeepers to opportunities. Corruption during this period was less flamboyant and more systemic. It operated through networks of influence rather than headline-grabbing cash seizures. The state’s economic stagnation, industrial flight, and weak private investment reflected not only ideological choices but also the suffocating effect of political control. Yet the beginning of the end came when the state sought to industrialise by force.
SINGUR: FERTILE SOIL, FRACTURED TRUST
In 2006, the Left government acquired agricultural land in Singur for Tata Motors to build the Nano factory. To the government, it was a symbol of modernisation. To many farmers, it was dispossession.
Mamata Banerjee transformed Singur into a moral battlefield. Standing on dusty roads and makeshift stages, she accused the Left of trampling the rights of ordinary people in the name of development. The movement changed Bengal politics forever.
NANDIGRAM: THE BREAKING POINT
If Singur shook the Left, Nandigram shattered it. In 2007, protests erupted over a proposed chemical hub. Police firing on demonstrators led to deaths and national outrage.
The images were indelible: smoke rising over fields, grieving families, and a government appearing at war with its own people. Nandigram exposed the Left Front’s moral exhaustion. The party that once claimed to represent peasants now stood accused of using state power against them. Mamata rode that wave of anger to power in 2011.
THE PROMISE OF PORIBORTON
When Mamata took office, she was seen as a street fighter who had defeated a seemingly invincible political machine. She promised clean government, administrative accountability, and dignity for ordinary Bengalis. For a brief period, hope hung over Writers’ Buildings like the first rain after a long summer. But the architecture of political patronage did not disappear. It changed owners.
SARADHA CHIT FUND SCAM: THE FIRST GREAT BETRAYAL
The rise and collapse of the Saradha Group remain one of the darkest chapters in West Bengal’s recent political and financial history—a scandal in which greed wore the mask of trust, and deception was dressed in the language of faith.
Founded by Sudipta Sen in the early 2000s, the Saradha Group grew into a sprawling corporate labyrinth, an umbrella network of nearly 200 companies that promised extraordinary returns to ordinary people. It was not, strictly speaking, a traditional chit fund, though it was widely described as one. It operated as a Ponzi scheme or collective investment fraud, sustained not by genuine profits but by the constant inflow of new investor deposits.
Its success was built on an unsettling understanding of Bengal’s social and economic anxieties. Saradha targeted a population where financial insecurity was widespread and access to formal banking and investment channels remained limited. To millions of small savers — schoolteachers, farmers, hawkers, pensioners, and homemakers — the company offered not merely high returns, but the promise of dignity and financial security.
Sudipta Sen understood that trust, once manufactured, could be monetised. He wrapped the enterprise in cultural and spiritual symbolism, invoking the revered name of Ma Sarada Devi to project sanctity and reassurance. He deployed a vast army of local agents, familiar faces from neighbourhoods and villages, who lent the scheme the credibility of personal relationships. And he surrounded the company with a halo of political influence and celebrity endorsement that made scepticism appear almost unreasonable.
The list of prominent names associated with Saradha gave the enterprise a powerful veneer of legitimacy. Satabdi Roy served as a brand ambassador. Kunal Ghosh headed the group’s media operations. Madan Mitra, then the state’s Transport Minister, was linked to the group’s labour wing. Other political figures across party lines, including Himanta Biswa Sarma and Matang Sinh, were also named in connection with the broader investigation, alongside actor Mithun Chakraborty, whose public association lent the enterprise further glamour.
With such an array of political and celebrity backing, Saradha appeared to many not as a dubious financial scheme, but as a trusted institution. The well-connected were enticed by the prospect of easy money. The innocent was persuaded by familiar faces and promises that sounded too reassuring to doubt.
But Saradha’s reach extended beyond politics. Sudipta Sen also sought to shape the information ecosystem itself. He acquired media outlets, including Channel 10, and in a letter written before the group’s collapse, alleged that substantial payments were being made to secure favourable coverage and influence. He claimed that one prominent Bengali newspaper was to receive ₹60 lakh a month under an arrangement that also included a lucrative appointment for Kunal Ghosh as chief executive of the channel at a reported salary of ₹15 lakh per month.
In effect, Saradha did not merely buy political patronage; it attempted to purchase public perception. That made the fraud especially dangerous. Warnings were muffled. Scrutiny was softened. The scheme’s legitimacy was amplified by the very institutions expected to question it.
By the time Saradha collapsed in 2013, the damage was staggering. Estimates suggest that more than 1.7 million depositors invested in the scheme, and total losses were estimated at $4 billion to $6 billion.
Behind those numbers lay countless personal tragedies. Retirement savings vanished. Children’s education funds disappeared. Families who had entrusted their futures to a company draped in political influence and spiritual symbolism were left with little more than receipts and regret. The Saradha scandal was not merely a financial fraud.
It was a case study in how political access, celebrity endorsement, media influence, and public desperation can converge to create an extraordinary machine of deception. And when that machine collapsed, it buried not just money, but the faith of millions who believed that trust still had value in public life.
THE NARADA BRIBERY SCANDAL
The Narada Sting Operation stands as one of the most consequential political scandals in West Bengal’s recent history, second only to the Saradha collapse in its impact on public consciousness. If Saradha exposed the devastating consequences of financial fraud, Narada laid bare something even more corrosive: the apparent normalisation of bribery at the highest levels of public life.
The operation first came into public view in 2016, though the undercover investigation began in 2014. Conducted by journalist Mathew Samuel, the sting sought to test a troubling proposition — whether political access and official favours in West Bengal could be purchased with cash.
The answer, captured on hidden cameras, was deeply unsettling. In video footage released by Narada News, several senior political figures and a police officer were allegedly seen accepting money from individuals posing as representatives of a fictitious company seeking business advantages. The images were stark and disquieting: bundles of notes changing hands with an ease that suggested not shock, but familiarity.
Among those featured in the recordings were prominent TMC leaders, including Firhad Hakim, Subrata Mukherjee, Madan Mitra, Saugata Roy, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, Prasun Banerjee and Sovan Chatterjee. The recordings also included Suvendu Adhikari and Mukul Roy, both of whom later left the TMC, as well as senior IPS officer S.M.H. Mirza.
Narada was more than a sting operation. It was a political X-ray. It exposed a system in which cash appeared to function as the unspoken grammar of power — a parallel language through which influence was negotiated, and public office risked becoming a commodity.
That is what made the scandal so unsettling. This was not a case involving obscure middlemen or faceless operators. The allegations touched elected representatives, cabinet ministers, members of Parliament and a senior police officer — individuals entrusted with safeguarding the public interest.
For ordinary citizens, the implications were profound. What does merit mean when access can be bought? What confidence can an entrepreneur have in a system where unofficial payments are perceived as a cost of doing business? How can young people believe in public institutions when those in authority appear, at least in the footage, to treat bribery as routine?
Narada forced West Bengal to confront a deeply uncomfortable truth: corruption does not always hide in shadows. Sometimes it sits in plain sight, smiles for the camera, and slips currency into a drawer as if it were part of the day’s work.
The scandal left a lasting stain on the state’s credibility in governance. It reinforced the perception that bribery was not an aberration but, for many, an entrenched feature of political life. In the end, Narada was not only about the money exchanged on camera. It was about the erosion of trust.
It was about the quiet and dangerous message sent to society — that rules are negotiable, principles are expendable, and success too often depends not on talent or integrity, but on one’s willingness to pay the price of entry into the corridors of power.
SSC RECRUITMENT SCAM
The West Bengal School Service Commission recruitment scam is among the most devastating scandals in Bengal’s recent history, not merely because thousands of jobs were allegedly sold, but because it struck at the sanctum of education itself.
When corruption enters the classroom, it does not stop at the appointment letter. It seeps into the moral foundation of society. Education is the one force capable of challenging inequality, dismantling patronage, and equipping a generation to resist corruption. But when the education system itself is compromised, the consequences are profound. Unqualified or undeserving individuals do not simply occupy salaried positions; they stand before blackboards as custodians of the next generation’s minds.
A corrupt teacher can do more damage than a corrupt politician. The scandal began with the State Level Selection Test (SLST) conducted in 2016 by the West Bengal School Service Commission for teaching posts in Classes IX to XII and for Group C and D staff positions in government-aided schools.
The stakes were enormous. Around 23 lakh candidates sat for the examination, each carrying a quiet dream of dignity, stability, and a secure livelihood. The official notification advertised approximately 24,640 vacancies. Yet, in a glaring anomaly, 25,753 appointment letters were issued — more than 1,100 above the sanctioned posts.
That discrepancy was the first crack in the wall. Subsequent investigations and court proceedings revealed allegations of tampered OMR sheets, manipulated merit lists, blank answer scripts receiving appointments, and candidates securing jobs by paying substantial bribes. Merit, the cornerstone of any fair recruitment process, appeared to have been pushed aside by money and influence.
For thousands of deserving aspirants, the discovery was shattering. Years of preparation, family sacrifices, and personal hope were rendered vulnerable by a system that seemed to reward access over ability.
In a landmark judgment, a division bench of the Calcutta High Court comprising Justice Debangsu Basak and Justice Shabbar Rashidi invalidated large numbers of appointments connected to the 2016 recruitment process, affecting nearly 24,000 jobs.
The Commission acknowledged thousands of irregular appointments, but the full scale of the alleged wrongdoing continued to fuel public outrage. The names linked to the investigation included some of the most influential figures in the state’s education and political establishment: Partha Chatterjee, former minister Paresh Chandra Adhikari, former board president Kalyanmoy Gangopadhyay, former SSC chairman Subiresh Bhattacharya, former advisory committee head Shanti Prasad Sinha, former SSC secretary Ashok Saha, and other officials connected to the recruitment process.
But the real story lies beyond the list of accused. It lies in the thousands of young men and women who spent years studying under dim lights, believing that hard work would be enough.
It lies in families that borrowed money for coaching classes. It lies in candidates who watched others leap ahead through the back door while they waited at a locked gate. Some abandoned their aspirations. Some crossed age limits. Some saw years of effort dissolve into despair. The recruitment scandal was not simply an administrative failure. It was a moral wound. And it was only one part of a broader pattern.
The Saradha Ponzi scheme, the Rose Valley collapse, and the Narada sting operation stand as the most emblematic scandals of Bengal’s 2010–2020 decade. Yet they are only the visible peaks of a much larger structure of political dysfunction.
ELECTIONS AND THE SHADOW OF ‘CHAPPA’ VOTE
West Bengal’s electoral history has long been haunted by allegations of booth capturing and “chappa vote”—a colloquial term for fraudulent voting.
Across decades, and under different ruling parties, opposition groups have alleged that intimidation, coercion, and organised manipulation distorted the democratic process, especially in rural areas. For many citizens, voting has at times felt less like a free expression of choice and more like an act performed under the watchful eye of local power brokers. The cost has often been measured in violence, fear, and lives lost defending the right to vote.
THE INDUSTRY OF FAKE DOCUMENTS
Another corrosive practice has been the alleged ease with which forged government documents can be obtained.
Birth certificates, caste certificates, income certificates, and other official records are widely perceived to be vulnerable to manipulation through bribery and local influence. In many rural areas, residents often depend on party-linked intermediaries rather than formal administrative channels to access public services. When official records become negotiable, the state’s credibility itself is compromised.
WELFARE AND THE LEAKAGE OF PUBLIC FUNDS
Corruption also surfaces in the distribution of welfare and disaster relief. Resources intended for vulnerable citizens can be siphoned off by local intermediaries, political actors, and administrative officials, leaving beneficiaries with only a fraction of what was promised.
The distribution of aid after cyclone Amphan became a major flashpoint, with allegations of irregularities and favouritism prompting public protests and disciplinary action against some local leaders. These controversies underscored a persistent concern: that even relief meant for those facing catastrophe can become entangled in the politics of patronage.
Taken together, these episodes reveal a troubling pattern. When elections are contested through intimidation, documents can be fabricated, welfare programs are vulnerable to leaks, and teaching jobs are allegedly sold, corruption ceases to be a series of isolated scandals.
It becomes a parallel system of governance. And in such a system, the greatest loss is not only financial. It is the erosion of trust, the weakening of merit, and the quiet despair of citizens who begin to wonder whether honesty still has a place in public life.
ROSE VALLEY: A FAMILIAR SCRIPT
Soon came the Rose Valley Group scandal, another large Ponzi collapse that deepened public suspicion about the nexus between politics and dubious financial schemes. The pattern was hauntingly similar: easy promises, celebrity endorsements, political proximity, and eventual ruin for ordinary depositors.
Between 2011 and 2026, it was not merely a succession of scandals in West Bengal but a turning point in the anatomy of corruption itself. During these years, corruption shed its old skin and emerged in a more agile, intimate, and pervasive form.
Under the Left Front, corruption was often described as institutional and tightly regulated—a system controlled by a disciplined party structure in which access to jobs, contracts, and state resources flowed through an organised political hierarchy. It was a fortress of patronage, rigid and methodical.
Under the All India Trinamool Congress, that structure did not disappear. It evolved. The fortress became a marketplace. Power grew more personalised. Influence became transactional. Political loyalty turned into currency. Public institutions, welfare schemes, and local networks were woven together into a vast patronage machine in which access often depended not on merit but on proximity to power.
At the summit of this system stood some of the most notorious scandals in Bengal’s recent history. The collapse of the Saradha Group and the Rose Valley Group exposed how millions of ordinary savers were drawn into fraudulent investment schemes that flourished amid allegations of political protection. The Narada Sting Operation showed prominent leaders allegedly accepting cash on camera, reducing public office to a bargaining counter. The West Bengal School Service Commission recruitment scam revealed that even the education system — the moral backbone of any society — was vulnerable to the corrosive logic of jobs-for-cash.
Yet corruption in Bengal was not confined to spectacular scandals. It seeped into daily life. For countless citizens, bribery became a routine toll to secure documents, access services, or resolve basic administrative matters. A small payment here, a recommendation there, a quiet understanding that from the senior officer to the lowest clerk, the machinery often moved faster when lubricated with cash.
What was once condemned as wrongdoing came to be accepted by many as a ‘necessary evil.’ That normalisation may be corruption’s most dangerous victory. The consequences have been profound.
Public trust has eroded. Institutions have weakened. Merit has been compromised. Young people who studied for years found themselves confronting a painful question: if influence and money determine outcomes, what value does hard work still hold?
And yet, despite recurring scandals, the ruling party retained substantial electoral support, aided in part by expansive welfare programmes such as Lakshmir Bhandar, direct financial assistance to community Durga Puja committees reportedly reaching ₹1,10,000 per club, and a broad network of social benefits that touched millions of households.
For many families, these schemes provided tangible relief. Critics also reinforced a politics of dependency in which welfare and electoral loyalty became closely intertwined.
Meanwhile, Bengal’s unemployed youth remained a quieter constituency of discontent. Behind the headlines and campaign slogans lies a generation grappling with shrinking opportunities, uncertain livelihoods, and mounting frustration over the state of education, healthcare, and job creation.
If West Bengal is to break this cycle, reform must be deeper than rhetoric. Trust in public institutions must be rebuilt. Anti-corruption agencies need genuine independence. Recruitment to government jobs must be transparent, technology-driven, and strictly merit-based. Expanding digital public services can reduce the discretionary power of middlemen who thrive on opacity. Investments in education and healthcare must be protected from political interference and strengthened as pillars of social mobility.
Citizens should be empowered to audit public works and welfare programmes in their own communities, creating accountability from the ground up. Equally important, corruption must carry swift and certain consequences. Special fast-track courts dedicated to such cases could help dismantle the culture of impunity that has too often shielded the powerful. A simpler and more transparent investment climate would also reduce opportunities for rent-seeking while encouraging genuine economic growth.
But no institutional reform can succeed without an informed and vigilant electorate. Democracy begins with the ballot, but it survives through awareness. Every vote is more than a political choice; it is a decision about the future of one’s family, one’s community, and the generations to come.
West Bengal now stands at a moral crossroads. It can continue down a path where patronage overshadows merit, and corruption becomes an accepted cost of daily life. Or it can choose a different course — one where institutions are stronger than individuals, public office is treated as a trust rather than a prize, and government once again serves the people instead of the networks that profit from power.
Only by pursuing these changes together can Bengal begin to repair its wounded institutions and restore its people’s faith in the promise of honest governance.
