In the lead-up to the crucial state and local body elections across India, a disturbing pattern has emerged: central and state investigative agencies conducting raids on political consultancy firms that shape opposition strategies.
On 8 January 2026, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) raided the Kolkata office of the Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC) in Salt Lake and the residence of its director, Pratik Jain, on Loudon Street. I-PAC, which manages the Trinamool Congress (TMC)'s election strategy for the upcoming West Bengal Assembly polls in March 2026, became the center of a political storm when Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee arrived at the sites, alleging the raid aimed to steal sensitive TMC data.
The ED linked the action to a 2020 coal smuggling money-laundering case, claiming proceeds of nearly Rs 10 crore were routed to I-PAC via hawala for services during the 2022 Goa Assembly elections. Banerjee reportedly left with files and a hard disk, prompting the ED to accuse her of obstructing the probe and tampering with evidence.
Just days later, on 13 January 2026, Pune Crime Branch officials visited the office of DesignBoxed Innovations Pvt Ltd in Vakdewadi-Shivajinagar, a firm handling the civic poll strategy for the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) faction led by Ajit Pawar.
This occurred amid high-stakes municipal elections in Maharashtra, including the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) polls on 15 January 2026.
Police described it as a routine document verification following reports of suspicious activity, with no objectionable findings. DesignBoxed, co-founded by Naresh Arora—a close aide to Ajit Pawar—had previously faced an Income Tax raid in October 2021 while managing campaigns for the Congress party in Karnataka, which the firm labeled as "political vendetta."
Normalising Selective Intimidation
These incidents echo earlier cases where raids on Opposition figures, particularly those not considered major national names, often receive minimal media attention and fade quickly from public discourse.
It has now become so routine that such actions rarely generate sustained national focus. For example, former Rajasthan minister Mahendrajeet Singh Malviya questioned the purpose of the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) raids conducted at his residence and business premises, claiming that no incriminating material was recovered during the searches. This episode did not even become a big national news story.
While probes into corruption are essential, the timing and targeting of these raids—whether on individual politicians or on political strategists—raise serious alarms about their use as tools to intimidate opposition forces, potentially tilting electoral battles and eroding democratic norms.
The raids on I-PAC and DesignBoxed are not isolated but part of a broader trend where investigative agencies appear to target political consultants aligned with opposition parties, often timed to disrupt election preparations.
In the I-PAC case, the ED's action came precisely two months before West Bengal's polls, focusing on a firm integral to TMC's data-driven campaigning, including voter analytics and candidate selection. Similarly, DesignBoxed's scrutiny by Pune police occurred on the eve of Maharashtra's civic elections, where Ajit Pawar's NCP was contesting in alliances against the BJP. The 2021 Income Tax raid on DesignBoxed, during its work for Congress in Karnataka, involved searches that found no irregularities but were decried as an attempt to deter opposition consultants.
This pattern extends to individual strategists. Mahendrajeet Singh Malviya's ACB raids followed his defection signals to Congress from the BJP, with searches yielding no evidence but coinciding with Rajasthan's political atmosphere.
Historically, such actions have normalised intimidation: central agencies like ED and CBI have faced accusations of bias under BJP rule at the center, with raids spiking before polls in states like Bihar, Delhi, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra, targeting opposition aides.
This selective enforcement undermines electoral integrity by creating a chilling effect, where consultants hesitate to engage with non-ruling parties, skewing the democratic playing field toward incumbents.
Deep analysis reveals a strategic calculus: by hitting consultants rather than parties directly, agencies exploit legal ambiguities, avoiding direct constitutional scrutiny while accessing campaign blueprints. In data-centric elections, this equates to preemptive sabotage, as seen in TMC's claims of strategy theft. If unchecked, it fosters an environment where opposition campaigns are perpetually under siege, eroding fair play.
Compromising Crucial Data Privacy
In an era of data-driven politics, raids on firms like I-PAC expose sensitive voter insights, campaign blueprints, and proprietary party data, breaching privacy and handing undue advantages to ruling entities. During the 8 January raid, TMC alleged ED officers attempted to seize the party's election strategy documents, prompting Banerjee's intervention.
I-PAC holds granular data on beneficiaries of schemes, ground surveys, MLA performance feedback, and ticket allocation recommendations—core to modern campaigns, as evidenced by its role in TMC's 2021 Bengal victory and Aam Aadmi Party's 2020 Delhi success.
Such incursions violate fundamental privacy rights lacking safeguards for political data. The Supreme Court, in its January 15 hearing on the I-PAC case, noted that while agencies can't interfere in party activities, bona fide probes must proceed—but questioned obstruction under the guise of elections. Yet, ED's claim that nothing was seized contrasts with reports of government files found at I-PAC, raising transparency issues. Contracts between parties and firms like I-PAC or DesignBoxed often lack explicit data-sharing clauses, leaving room for exploitation.
For instance, in the school recruitment scam in West Bengal, central agencies arrested former Education Minister Partha Chatterjee and his alleged close aide, Arpita Mukherjee. During this period, a large section of the Bengali media—particularly television channels and digital platforms—ran repeated stories focusing on the kind of dresses, jewellery, and even extremely private personal items reportedly found at her residence during the raids.
This raises a fundamental question: who leaked this information? Journalists were not present during the searches, and neither the Enforcement Directorate nor the CBI mentioned such details in their official press releases.
In that case, either these reports were speculative or inaccurate, or the investigating agencies themselves allowed such information to be leaked.
If this is the standard of confidentiality and respect for privacy during investigations, it becomes difficult to understand how political parties—especially those in opposition—can trust that their documents and internal materials will remain protected during similar probes.
Risk of Widespread Sabotage and Institutional Erosion
Unchecked investigative raids on political consultancies risk becoming a new instrument of electoral sabotage. When enforcement agencies move against firms that design campaigns, manage voter data, and coordinate opposition alliances, the chilling effect is immediate.
Consultancies become wary of working with non-ruling parties, electoral competition tilts, and mistrust seeps into the democratic process. The scrutiny of I-PAC in a coal-linked probe signals how investigations can intrude into the domain of election strategy itself.
Such actions also invite retaliation. If central agencies intensify raids in opposition-ruled regions, state agencies are likely to respond in kind—often more aggressively—creating a vicious cycle of institutional one-upmanship.
This tit-for-tat approach transforms elections from contests of ideology into battles of investigative power, where fear replaces free political engagement.
This phenomenon may best be described as a “vengeance virus.” Raids increasingly appear as punitive responses to political defiance or defection, eroding party autonomy and normalising coercion. The fallout extends beyond political parties to democratic institutions themselves. Once election strategy, data collection, and campaign infrastructure are placed under coercive pressure, the neutrality of the referees comes under scrutiny.
Allegations that the Election Commission of India has acted in a partisan manner—often accused by the Opposition of favouring the BJP—have been raised repeatedly over the years. Yet, little appears to have changed. What is more troubling is that this alleged partisanship is now seen cascading down to the states.
West Bengal offers a telling example. During the 2023 Panchayat elections, complaints of bias and administrative failure became so acute that the Calcutta High Court was compelled to intervene, openly questioning the conduct and neutrality of the State Election Commissioner. When courts are forced to step in to correct electoral processes, it is not merely an administrative lapse—it is a warning signal of institutional erosion.
The larger risk is federal erosion. A strong Centre invites counter-abuse in non-BJP states, hollowing out cooperative federalism.
Judicial oversight, as emphasised in recent Supreme Court hearings, becomes critical—staying coercive actions while examining interference can restore balance. Without urgent safeguards, elections risk becoming exercises in institutional dominance rather than expressions of popular will. Democracy cannot endure such a drift unchecked.
(Sayantan Ghosh teaches journalism at St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous), Kolkata, and is the author of The Aam Aadmi Party: The Untold Story of a Political Uprising and Its Undoing. He is on X as @sayantan_gh. This is an opinion piece and views expressed are the author's own. The Quint does not endorse nor is responsible for them)