Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan has written to West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee seeking her intervention after veteran journalist R. Rajagopal's passport renewal was denied following an adverse police verification report in Bengal, according to India Today and The Hindu. The move exposes the simmering CPI(M)–TMC rivalry beneath the surface of opposition unity.

A passport is a forty-eight-page booklet. It should not require a chief minister to write to another chief minister to get one renewed. Yet here we are — Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan has dispatched a formal letter to West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, asking her to personally intervene in the case of R. Rajagopal, a veteran journalist and former editor of The Telegraph, whose passport renewal has been blocked after Bengal police filed an adverse verification report. According to India Today and The Hindu, this is not a routine bureaucratic hiccup. It is, if you read between the lines, a small grenade lobbed through the polite fiction of opposition unity.

The facts are deceptively simple. Rajagopal, who has decades of journalistic work behind him, applied for passport renewal. The process ran into a wall at the stage every Indian passport applicant knows and dreads: police verification. West Bengal police, which report to the TMC-run state government, returned an adverse report — effectively a red flag that halts the entire process, as reported by Deccan Chronicle. The specific grounds cited in the adverse report have not been made public in full, but reports in Telangana Today and India Today indicate the journalist's leftist political leanings and past associations with CPI(M)-aligned circles are at the heart of the matter.

Now, pause on that for a moment. A state's police machinery — controlled by a ruling party — can deny a citizen a passport by simply filing a negative verification. No court order. No criminal conviction. Just a report, stamped and filed, that says: we do not recommend this person for international travel. In a country where passport denial has historically been wielded as a tool of executive displeasure, the question is not whether this particular case is justified. The question is: who benefits from this denial, and what does the intervention tell us about the power dynamics nobody in the opposition wants to discuss openly?

It is important to note: As of this writing, neither Mamata Banerjee, the TMC, nor the West Bengal Police have issued any official statement responding to Vijayan's letter or addressing the adverse police verification report filed against Rajagopal. The absence of a public response from Nabanna means the Bengal government's rationale — whether administrative, procedural, or otherwise — remains unheard. Any conclusions about political targeting, therefore, remain allegations made by CPI(M) leaders and unnamed critics, not established facts.

The Police Verification Lever — TMC's Quiet Weapon?

Police verification in India is a state subject. The local thana files the report; the state home department oversees the process. In West Bengal, that chain of command ends at Nabanna — Mamata Banerjee's seat of power. According to The Hindu, Rajagopal's case is not the first instance where Bengal's police verification process has drawn scrutiny; critics have long argued that the TMC government uses this administrative lever to reward allies and inconvenience perceived adversaries. Whether Rajagopal was specifically targeted or caught in a broader dragnet of political profiling remains unclear — and in the absence of any official explanation from the West Bengal government or its police apparatus, both possibilities remain open.

What makes this case particularly revealing is the identity of the person picking up the phone — or, more precisely, picking up the pen. Pinarayi Vijayan is not some backbench MP writing a representation. He is the chief minister of Kerala, the CPI(M)'s most powerful elected leader in India. For him to write to Mamata Banerjee, a fellow opposition leader, is to publicly acknowledge that TMC's state machinery is doing something his party finds unacceptable — and to do so not through quiet diplomatic channels, but through a letter that was always going to become public. As reported by India Today, the letter specifically seeks Banerjee's "intervention" — a word calibrated to be both polite and pointed.

Political Pulse

Here is the part the press releases will not say, but political corridors in both Thiruvananthapuram and Kolkata are buzzing about: this letter is not really about one journalist's passport. The CPI(M) and TMC have been engaged in a cold war that predates the INDIA bloc, survives it, and may yet outlive it. In West Bengal, the CPI(M) was decimated by Mamata Banerjee's TMC — driven from a state it ruled for 34 unbroken years. That wound has never healed. The talk in Left circles, according to political observers quoted across multiple outlets, is that TMC systematically uses state machinery — from police verification to municipal permits — to squeeze CPI(M) sympathisers and fellow travellers. A journalist with known leftist leanings getting an adverse police report in TMC-controlled Bengal fits that pattern like a key in a lock — though it must be stressed that this framing comes from CPI(M)-aligned sources, and the TMC has not publicly addressed the specific allegations.

On the other side, TMC insiders — speaking off the record, as they invariably do in these situations — reportedly dismiss this as manufactured outrage. The whisper in Nabanna corridors, according to a political commentator tracking the story, is that Vijayan's letter is less about press freedom and more about scoring a public point against Mamata at a moment when the INDIA bloc's internal contradictions are becoming harder to paper over. "If he really cared about the journalist, he would have called," one TMC source reportedly told the commentator. "A letter is a press release with a stamp."

The truth, as India Herald's read of the situation suggests, likely sits somewhere between both camps — and is more uncomfortable than either would admit. The CPI(M) genuinely believes TMC runs Bengal like a one-party fiefdom where dissent is administratively punished. TMC genuinely believes the CPI(M) manufactures victimhood to stay relevant in a state where its vote share has collapsed. Both things can be simultaneously true. The passport denial is simply the latest battlefield in a war that has been fought across municipal elections, university appointments, and trade union turf for over a decade.

The INDIA Bloc's Fault Line in a 48-Page Booklet

Zoom out, and the implications stretch well beyond Bengal and Kerala. The INDIA bloc — the broad opposition grouping that positions itself as the democratic alternative to the BJP — includes both the CPI(M) and TMC. They sit at the same table in Delhi. They issue joint statements about democratic values, press freedom, and the misuse of state machinery by the BJP. And yet, here is one INDIA bloc chief minister publicly accusing another INDIA bloc chief minister's police force of denying a journalist his fundamental right to travel — on what appear to be political grounds.

The BJP, predictably, has not had to say a word. The optics do the work. Every time the opposition talks about "united front" politics, the ruling party can simply point to this letter and ask: united against whom, exactly? Against us, or against each other?

According to Deccan Chronicle, the passport row has surfaced alongside the beginning of the Special Investigative Report (SIR) process in five locations — a procedural detail that further complicates the timeline and raises questions about whether the adverse verification was timed to coincide with broader administrative actions.

What Comes Next — And What the Reader Should Watch For

India Herald's assessment of what this sets in motion is straightforward but consequential. First, Mamata Banerjee faces a classic no-win choice: if she intervenes and clears the passport, she looks like she capitulated to CPI(M) pressure — politically toxic in Bengal, where her entire brand is built on having vanquished the Left. If she ignores the letter, the CPI(M) gets a ready-made exhibit for every future argument that TMC is no different from the BJP when it comes to misusing state power against critics.

Second, watch for the INDIA bloc's coordination mechanisms. If the alliance's leadership — particularly Congress, which brokers between its constituent parties — stays silent on this, it signals that the bloc has no real mechanism for resolving internal disputes that involve state machinery. That is not a coalition; it is a photo-op.

Third, the journalist himself. R. Rajagopal's case is now a political football, which means his actual passport problem may get resolved faster precisely because it has become embarrassing — or it may get buried deeper as neither side wants to be seen conceding. The human cost of inter-party posturing is rarely counted in political arithmetic.

For the reader who wants to understand the real texture of Indian opposition politics in 2026, forget the joint press conferences. Read the letters one chief minister writes to another about a forty-eight-page booklet that a retired journalist cannot get renewed. That is where the alliance lives — or doesn't.

Key Takeaways

• Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan wrote formally to Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee after veteran journalist R. Rajagopal's passport renewal was blocked by an adverse West Bengal police verification report, per India Today and The Hindu.
• Police verification is a state-controlled process in India — in Bengal, it is administered by TMC-run machinery, giving the ruling party effective veto power over passport renewals, as analysts and critics have noted.
• As of publication, neither Mamata Banerjee, the TMC, nor the West Bengal Police have issued any official response to the letter or the allegations of political targeting.
• The CPI(M)–TMC rivalry predates and runs deeper than their shared membership in the INDIA opposition bloc, with the Left accusing TMC of systematically using state apparatus against perceived sympathisers — a charge TMC has not publicly addressed in this case.
• The BJP stands to gain from the public spectacle of two INDIA bloc chief ministers in open conflict over the misuse of state power — the very charge the opposition levels at the ruling party.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why was journalist R. Rajagopal's passport renewal denied?

According to India Today and The Hindu, Rajagopal's passport renewal was blocked after West Bengal police filed an adverse police verification report. Reports indicate his leftist political leanings and past associations may have been a factor, though the West Bengal government has not publicly confirmed or denied this.

Why did Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan write to Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee?

Vijayan, as the CPI(M)'s most powerful elected leader, sought Banerjee's personal intervention to clear the adverse police report and restore Rajagopal's passport, framing it as a press freedom issue, per India Today.

Has TMC or West Bengal Police responded to Vijayan's letter?

As of publication, neither Mamata Banerjee, the TMC, nor the West Bengal Police have issued any official public statement responding to the letter or addressing the allegations of political targeting in the adverse verification report.

What does this mean for the INDIA opposition bloc?

The public letter exposes a deep CPI(M)–TMC rivalry within the INDIA bloc, raising questions about whether the opposition alliance can manage internal disputes involving state machinery — a vulnerability the BJP can exploit without saying a word.

Who controls police verification for passports in India?

Police verification is a state-subject process — conducted by local police stations and overseen by the state home department, meaning the ruling party of a state effectively controls this stage of passport issuance.

Who is R. Rajagopal?

R. Rajagopal is a veteran journalist and former editor of The Telegraph, a major English-language newspaper, with known associations with left-leaning political circles, according to multiple reports including Telangana Today and India Today.