2019 Lok Sabha Election | SabrangIndia

The 17th Lok Sabha in review

sabrang — Wed, 29 May 2024 04:56:54 +0000

Introduction

As the political parties vie for power to form the new union government in Lok Sabha (LS) or the lower house of the parliament, we analyse how the current and 17^th Lok Sabha has performed over the last 5 years, highlighting many firsts in its history and tumultuous political journey over the course of its tenure. In this piece we dwell into composition, performance, and politics of the existing Lok Sabha, as well as, gather interesting insights into the challenges it faced.

Composition

The 17^th Lok Sabha was formed in June 2019 with the BJP as a ruling party, which currently has 287 Member of Parliament (MPs) out of total 543 seats compared to 46 MPs from the main opposition Congress Party. Notably, the 17^th Lok Sabha has 267 first-term MPs. In terms of gender representation, only 14% of Lok Sabha (LS) MPs are women, making LS a significantly male dominated space. As per PRS Legislative Research report, the average age of an MP is 54, while on average women MPs are 6 years younger compared to male MPs. Furthermore, as per ADR report, 44% of current Lok Sabha MPs face criminal charges.

Performance

The present Lok Sabha had 274 sitting across 15 sessions in total, with first session hosted on June 17, 2019, and last one ended on February 10, 2024. PRS reported that 11 out of the 15 sessions held during this Lok Sabha were adjourned early (resulting in cancellation of 40 scheduled sittings), and the first and last sessions were extended by seven sittings and one sitting respectively. Significantly, this Lok Sabha is historic for being shortest in terms of number of sittings for any full-term Lok Sabha, with a total of 274 sittings and annual average of 55 sittings per year. In addition, the 17^th Lok Sabha has been without a Deputy Speaker during its entire duration, which is unprecedented. Pertinently, the Article 93 of the Constitution requires that Lok Sabha elect a Deputy Speaker ‘as soon as may be’, which suggests that the Lok Sabha has failed to fulfil the constitutional mandate by keeping the post of Deputy Speaker vacant for entire 5 years.

As per the Lok Sabha data, 179 Bills (excluding Finance and Appropriation Bills) were passed during its present tenure, with 58% of Bills being passed within two weeks of its introduction. Indian Express and PRS reported that 1/3^rd (35%) of all the Bills in the lower house were passed with less than an hour of discussion. Additionally, only 16% of the Bills were referred to different parliamentary Committees for detailed scrutiny compared to 14^th(UPA-I), 15^th (UPA-II) and 16^th LS, the percentage for which stands at 60%, 71%, and 28% respectively. PRS also reported that between 2019 and 2023 about 80% of the budget was voted on without discussion and in 2023 the entire budget was passed without discussion. Furthermore, 31% of total time in LS was spend on discussions other than legislation and budgets. Moreover, in spite of disruptions, Lok Sabha reportedly functioned for 88% of its scheduled time, with Question Hour functioning for 60% of its scheduled time.

The number of statements suo moto issued by ministers in public interest has reduced in the 17^th Lok Sabha with just 28 such statements, compared to 62 in the 16th, and 98 in the 15th Lok Sabha. Importantly, PM Narendra Modi has avoided to answer questions in the parliament from opposition MPs, making him visibly silent of various burning issues like ethnic violence in Manipur, land dispute at India-China border in Arunachal Pradesh, security breach in parliament, wrestler’s protests, among others. MPs from the states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, and Rajasthan were most active in asking questions in the Lok Sabha, with Maharashtra leading with 370 questions per MP, followed by 275 and 273 questions per MP from Andra Pradesh and Rajasthan respectively. Interestingly, on average relatively younger MPs (aged less than 60 years) asked more questions (226) compared to MPs aged over 60 years (180). Additionally, representatives from Kerala and Rajasthan had the highest rate of participation in the Lok Sabha debates.

Importantly, one of most ignoble moments in the history of parliament occurred during the present Lok Sabha tenure when a record number of 100 Lok Sabha MPs were suspended during the 2023 winter session of the Lok Sabha for alleged misconduct in the House, with 46 more MPs suspended from Rajya Sabha or the upper house. Pertinently, the important criminal Bills which replace the Indian Penal Code (IPC), Indian Evidence Act, and Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) were passed when hundreds of MPs were suspended, casting aspersion on the legitimacy of the executive’s conduct. In addition, during the 17^th LS, MPs were suspended on 206 instances, across both Houses of Parliament. As per Hindustan Times report, 264 questions raised by suspended MPs were removed from parliamentary records as per the rule.

Political signalling through the Lok Sabha

The 17^th Lok Sabha also saw a series of political moves in the form of legislative engagement and passing of important Bills, including introduction of the three new mammoth criminal laws, bill to criminalise Triple Talaq, women’s reservation Bill to potentially reserve 33% of seats in Parliament for women MPs, tinkering with Article 370 to remove special status from Jammu and Kashmir and dividing the erstwhile state into two separate Union Territories. At the same time, the executive was forced to repeal the three farm laws after facing stiff resistance and protests from farmers against alleged corporatisation of agriculture sector. The three farm laws which were introduced and later repealed by the government include (i) the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020, (ii) the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020, and (iii) the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020.

The BJP government further released “white paper” during the last session of the present Lok Sabha in February 2024 allegedly giving account (read comparison) of the work done by BJP government vis-à-vis the mismanagement of the previous UPA regime. While on the face of it, the white paper seems to give an account of economy and growth between the two regimes, it was markedly selective in highlighting the deficiencies of the UPA regime while hiding its own. The paper attacks UPA regime for corruption, scams, bad loans, high inflation, policy misadventures, and abandoned economic growth. The analysis of the white paper by the Indian Express found that it “…ignores all that is amiss with the economy. For instance, it does not even contain the word “unemployment”. This was when the government’s own Periodic Labour Force Survey showed that unemployment had reached a 45-year high in 2017-18.” Similarly, the news report said that the white paper does not contain any chart on GDP growth nor makes any mention about the missed decadal Census, which any government has missed for the first time since 1881.

Parliamentary infringements

The 17^th Lok Sabha was particularly marred by two instances which raised serious questions over its conduct and safety. The first incident is related to the security breach that occurred on 13 December 2023, during which the intruders successfully bypassed the security and jumped inside the House Chamber and threw canisters emitting yellow smoke, leading to utter confusion among the members of the house. In the second incident, which occurred on 21 September, 2023, the MP from BJP, Ramesh Bidhuri, gave an Islamophobic hate speech against a fellow MP from BSP, Danish Ali, calling him Mullah Terrorist, pimp, and circumcised. In the history of parliament, it was for the first time that such hate speech was delivered against anyone from the floor of the house. Ironically, such incident came at a time when the present government was accused of censoring the opposition MPs for using “unparliamentary” words, even as the ruling party’s member freely engaged himself in delivering hate speech from the dais.

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Most NOTA Votes In Areas Of Left-Wing Extremism, Reserved Seats, Bipolar Contests

Mon, 19 Aug 2019 04:45:05 +0000

Sonipat: Lok Sabha constituencies reserved for the scheduled castes (SC) and scheduled tribes (ST), and constituencies in areas affected by left-wing extremism saw a higher percentage of voters choosing “none of the above” or NOTA in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, while states that saw a multi-party contest saw a lower share of votes cast for NOTA, our analysis of polling data has revealed.

Nationwide, NOTA recorded 6.5 million votes–more than the population of Ahmedabad, or 1.06% of all votes polled in the 2019 general election. This was lower than 1.08% (6 million) polled in 2014. Bihar saw the highest vote-share (2%) for NOTA this year, followed by Andhra Pradesh (1.49%), Chhattisgarh (1.44%) and Gujarat (1.38%).

Source: Trivedi Center for Political Data, Ashoka University

The option to choose “none of the above” was put in place by the Supreme Court in its 2013 judgement following a writ petition by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, a human rights body. NOTA was envisaged to help voters express dissent while still maintaining the secrecy of their ballot to help achieve greater participation in the exercise of democracy.

“When the political parties realise that a large number of people are expressing their disapproval with the candidates being put up by them, gradually there will be a systemic change and the political parties will be forced to accept the will of the people and field candidates who are known for their integrity,” the then Chief Justice P Sathasivam wrote in the judgement.

On October 29, 2013, the Election Commission of India announced that even if the NOTA votes were higher than any other candidate in a constituency, the candidate with the most votes will be declared the winner.

“This provision made the NOTA option almost redundant,” Jagdeep Chhokar, founding trustee of the Association for Democratic Reforms, wrote in this December 2018 comment in The Hindu. “…the provision clarified that a NOTA vote would not have any impact on the election result, which is what interests candidates, political parties, and voters. Soon after this, candidates began campaigning against NOTA, telling voters that choosing the option meant wasting a vote.”

To look at the impact of NOTA on the 2019 election result, we compared the winning margin in a constituency against the NOTA vote-share. Twenty-six of 543 constituencies saw a higher vote-share for NOTA than the victory margin. That is, if those who voted for NOTA had chosen the runner-up in a constituency, he/she would have won the race.

NOTA will also help “wide participation of people”, the Supreme Court had said in its 2013 judgement. However, election data do not show such correlation: Of the top 10 constituencies with the highest NOTA vote-share, three recorded a turnout greater than the national average.

“So NOTA remained a toothless tool,” Ajit Ranade, economist, political analyst and a founding trustee of ADR, wrote in December 2018 in the Pune Mirror. “The NOTA button is a vote of discontent and must have teeth.” He cited the Maharashtra state election commission’s decision, applicable to local body elections, as an example. Under the order, if NOTA got the most votes in a constituency, the election would be cancelled and a fresh election would have to be conducted.

Reserved seats saw higher NOTA vote
On average, reserved seats recorded a higher NOTA turnout, as we said, than general seats in 2019: 1.76% of voters in all ST seats and 1.16% in SC seats chose NOTA, compared to 0.98% in general seats.

This is in line with earlier elections, according to this June 2019 analysis by Factly.in, a data journalism portal, which studied from 43 different elections and 6,298 constituencies (both Lok Sabha & assembly) that went to polls after the introduction of NOTA in 2013.

Source: Trivedi Center for Political Data, Ashoka University

Anecdotal evidence from Gadchiroli in Maharashtra and Bastar in Chhattisgarh suggests a mobilisation of Other Backward Classes (OBC) vote favouring NOTA against the ST candidates, according to this August 2018 paper in the Economic and Political Weekly.

In Bastar, OBCs formed the Pichda Varg Kalyan Manch (Backward Class Welfare Front), to protest against ST candidates, who according to them were getting unfair rights due to enforcement of the fifth schedule which grants special rights to tribal communities.

Areas with left-wing extremism saw higher NOTA vote-share
Since the inception of NOTA, areas affected by left-wing extremism have, on average, seen a higher NOTA vote-share as compared to other parts of the country, our analysis showed.

Of the top 10 constituencies with the highest NOTA vote in 2019, six are in areas affected by left-wing related violence, according to our analysis. This includes Bastar in Chhattisgarh where 4.56% of votes cast were for NOTA–second only to Gopalganj which recorded a 5.04% NOTA vote.

Paschim Champaran (4.51%), Jamui (4.16%), Nabarangpur (3.85%), Nawada (3.73%) and Koraput (3.38%) also saw high NOTA vote-shares.

Source: Trivedi Center for Political Data, Ashoka University

State-wise data also support this trend: Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh, affected by left-wing extremism, all saw a higher proportion of NOTA vote-share.

The high NOTA vote-share in the areas affected by Naxal and Maoist insurgencies points to a possible use of NOTA as a means to protest against state machinery.

The outlawed Communist Party of India (Maoist) used NOTA to “buttress their assembly election boycott call in Chhattisgarh” ahead of the 2013 state assembly elections, according to this October 2013 Times of India report. The rebels conducted training camps with dummy EVMs in Bastar to acquaint voters with NOTA and explain its significance as a tool to “protest against the government’s oppression and exploitation,” the report said.

More voters pick NOTA in bi-polar contests
States which saw a direct bi-polar contest between the two main national parties–the Indian National Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party or their allies–saw a higher NOTA vote-share as compared to states where there was a third alternative, our analysis of 2019 election data showed.

Gujarat, which had a direct contest between the BJP and the INC, saw a NOTA vote-share of 1.38%. Bihar, which saw a bi-polar contest between the BJP-Janata Dal (United) alliance and the INC-Rashtriya Janata Dal alliance, had a NOTA vote-share of 2%.

Similarly, Andhra Pradesh, which saw a contest between the two regional parties–the Telugu Desam Party and the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party–polled 1.49% NOTA votes.

Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, which saw three-way contests, recorded 0.84% and 0.53% NOTA vote-shares, respectively. While Delhi had the third alternative of the Aam Aadmi Party, Uttar Pradesh saw the alliance of the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party as an alternative to the national parties.

(Bansal and Marathe are students at Ashoka University.)

Courtesy: India Spend

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Post 2019 polls, fight back the dismantling of “India”

Mon, 24 Jun 2019 04:16:50 +0000

One month down, a close look at the recent poll results and lessons that could be learned

The 7-phase 17th LokSabha poll commenced on April 11, 2019 and concluded on May 19, covering 542 of the total 543 constituencies. Polling in the remaining constituency, in Tamil Nadu, stands deferred. The counting commenced on May 23, 2019 and concluded the next day.The broad outlines of the outcomes were, however, available on the first day of the counting itself.The incumbent regime came back to power with a bang.

Never before, in the recent past, has India so keenly awaited the results, because never before, in the recent past,has India stood so sharply divided.

So much so that the Time magazine described Indian Prime Minister NarendraModi as India’s “divider-in-chief” on the cover of its May 20, 2019 issue¹. Modi’s picture was on all international issues of the magazine, except the United States edition. The cover story², written by novelist AatishTaseer, had the headline: “Can the world’s largest democracy endure another five years of a Modi government?” A second one³, however, by Ian Bremmer, treatedModi far more positively, suggesting that Modiwas “India’s best hope” for economic reform.

Much before that – on March 15, 2019 – a long standing parliamentarian from the ruling BharatiyaJanata Party (BJP), SakshiMaharaj – also a saffron-robed Hindu monk – had predicted that after 2019, there would be no election in 2024.⁴Even President Ram NathKovind,in his customary address to the nation on the eve of the 70th Republic Day, had said⁵ that the 17th LokSabha election is not ‘once-in-a-generation’ but ‘once-in-a-century’ moment”.

All in all, the extraordinary salience of this poll, broadly mirroring that of the 1977, was widely acknowledged.⁶

The Poll Outcome
In a nutshell, the ruling BJP, in a “landslide” victory, won 303 seats (out of total 542 seats for which polls were held), up from previous 282, and the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance won 353 seats. The Indian National Congress won 52 seats – up from 44, and the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance won 91. Other parties and their alliances won 98 seats.⁷

In as many as 16 states and UTs, the BJP secured more than 50% of vote shares.⁸Nationally, the BJP’s vote share was 37.36% – up from 31.34%, while the Congress secured 19.49% – down from 19.52%.In terms of vote share, the next three largest parties are: AITC (4.07%); BSP (3.63%) and SP (2.55%).However, in terms of number of seats, DMK – a Congress ally, is the third largest party with 23 seats – all from Tamil Nadu.⁹

One of the notable aspects is that the Congress won none of the 25 seats in Rajasthan, won a lone seat (out 0f 29) in Madhya Pradesh and only 2 out of 11 seats in Chhattisgarh¹⁰.Barely six months prior, it had won the state assembly polls in these three states, under the same leadership, displacing the ruling BJP, led by the Modi-Shah duo.¹¹It, however, did fairly well in Punjab – winning 8 out of total 13. In the 2017 assembly polls in the state too, it had scored a convincing victory. Its vote share rose marginally, as compared to the assembly poll – from 38.5% to 40.12%.¹²

It did rather spectacularly well in Kerala – more so, keeping in mind its overall dismal performance – winning 15 out total 20 seats and its alliance partners winning another 4, conceding only 1 to the CPI(M) – the leader of the ruling coalition in the state.

In Tamil Nadu, it won 8 out of total 38, as the second largest partner in the DMK-led alliance.

The CPI(M) is down from 9, last time, to 3 – 2 in Tamil Nadu, as a constituent of the DMK-led alliance, and 1 in Kerala, as the leader of the ruling LDF. It could not secure even the second position in any of the seats in its erstwhile bastions – Tripura (with 2 sets) and West Bengal (with 42 seats).

The AAP is down from 4 (all in Punjab) to 1 (in Punjab).Last time, it had come second in all the 7 seats in Delhi and in 1seat in UP (Varanasi).This time, it conceded the second position to Congress, in 5 out of the 7 seats in Delhi. It did not contest from Varanasi.

The AITC is down from 34 to 22 seats (all in West Bengal), with a small rise in vote share.

The BSP is up from 0 to 10 (all in UP, in alliance with the SP and RLD), with some fall in vote share.

The DMK is up from 0 to 23 (all in Tamil Nadu), with some rise in vote share.^{13, 14}

The Landslide in Historical Perspective
This is by far the best performance by the BJP ever. This time, it has won 303 seats and secured 37.36% vote share as against 282 seats and 31.34% votes, last time, the best till then. Its previous best performance had been in 1998: 182 seats and 25.59% vote share.^{17, 18}

This poll outcome has been dubbed by quite a few media outlets, very much in tandem with their roles all along, as TsuNaMo (= Tsunami + Na(rendra) Mo(di)) or its various variants.¹⁵The label may be pretty well justified in terms of its (devastating) impact on the psyche of too many Indian citizens.¹⁶

So much so that even “sober” analysts have now started terming it as the confirmation of India’s transit, commencing in 2014, from, the now extinct “Congress system” – a term coined by an eminent social scientist, late Rajni Kothari¹⁹to denote the dominance of India’s multi-party democratic polity by the Congress – to a new “BJP system”.²⁰

The Congress System
It won’t be quite out of place to have a relook into what was the “Congress system”.

In 1952, the very first general election, the Congress had won 74.2% of the total seats, as against 3.3% by the second largest party and 45.9% vote share as against 10.6% of vote share. (The second largest parties in terms of seats and vote share were different.)In 1957, 75.1% of seats and 47.8% of votes, whereas the second largest, in terms of seats – 5.5%, and the one in terms of votes – 10.6%.In 1962, Congress won 73.1% seats and 44.7%.of the votes. The second largest in terms of seats – 5.9% and the one in terms of votes – 10.0%.¹⁷In all these three polls the Congress mascot had been Independent India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

The “Congress system” did not mean the dominance only of the parliament by the Congress but of the states as well.

Nehru passed away in 1964.

The “Congress system” suffered a very major jolt in 1967, by losing a number of state assembly elections. The INC suffered significant losses in 7 states which included Gujarat, where INC won 11 out of 24 seats while Swatantra Party won 12 seats; Madras, where INC won 3 out of 39 seats and DMK won 25 seats; Orissa, where INC won 6 out of 20 seats and Swatantra Party won 8 seats; Rajasthan, where INC won 10 out of 20 seats and Swatantra Party won 8 seats; West Bengal, where INC won 14 out of 40 seats; Kerala, where INC won only 1 out of 19 seats and Delhi where INC won 1 out of 7 seats while the remaining 6 were won by Bharatiya Jana Sangh. The decline in support for Congress was also reflected by the fact that it lost control of six state governments in the same year.²¹

That, essentially, signalled the end of the “Congress system”.
Nevertheless, even in the 1967 parliamentary poll, Congress had won 54.4% of seats and 40.8% of votes. The closest opponents had 5.9% seats and 10.0% of the votes.In 1971, in the parliamentary poll, the Congress faction led by Mrs Indira Gandhi, however, scored a very convincing victory: 68.0% seats and 43.7% vote share. The nearest opponents had 4.8% seats and 10.4% of the votes. The number of seats won by the Congress, as compared to its vote share, came down because of a higher index of opposition unity.

Regardless, the era of unilateral dominance by the Congress party had ended in 1967 itself. In 1977, post the Emergency, Congress, under Indira Gandhi, suffered an ignominious defeat, with its vote share plunging to 34.7% and seat share to 28.4%. This was the result of across-the-board opposition unity coming on top of widespread popular revulsion against the Emergency. The party that replaced the Congress in the parliament was, for all practical purpose, a coalition of parties, which could not hold together for too long.

The era of coalition was, effectively, inaugurated.
The Congress would, however, reach its peak parliamentary poll performance in 1984: 78.6% of seats and 49.1% of votes. The nearest opponents had 4.3% seats and 7.7% of the votes.

But, that would prove to be just a flash in the pan, which had been triggered by an extraordinary situation marked by the bloody Khalistani movement in Punjab, consequent Hindu exodus, capture of the famed Golden Temple by the armed militants, followed by the “Operation Blue Star” by the Indian Army causing a large number of deaths and severe damage to the temple, the assassination of the Indian Prime Minister by two of her Sikh bodyguards, sparking off a massacre of Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere.The “national security” card was used by the Congress, led by the just deceased Prime Minister’s only surviving son, to the hilt.

To that extent, the just concluded poll bears an eerie resemblance to the one in 1984.

The fall of Congress, since’84, has been fairly steep.The “Congress system”, as it appears, had been born with Jawaharlal Nehru as the first Prime Minister of India and withered away with his death.

Regardless, this time, the BJP has won 51.93% of seats and secured 37.36% of votes. Congress, the nearest opponent, in terms of both seats and vote share has 21.40% seats and 19.49% votes.¹³

Moreover, except for Kerala, the Congress had, till 1984, fought the general elections,by and large, without any ally. That’s far from the case with the BJP.

Even leaving aside the condition of the states, the present situation can hardly be bracketed with the Congress dominance till 1967, not even during the period from 1971-84, barring 1977-80.

There is, of course, a more salient dividing line separating the two – while the “Congress system”, despite some serious aberrations, operated broadly to strengthen the “Idea of India” that underpinned the Indian Constitution, this time, that very notion is faced with a mortal threat. More on this later.

Two Advance Signals
Even before the actual counting of votes began, two advance signals, as regards the likely outcome, became available. One, explicit, the other, implicit.

The obvious signal was, of course, the results of the various exit polls, released after the conclusion of the final phase of polling on May 19th.

The exit poll projections, however, widely diverged.While the India Today-Axis poll predicted around 352 seats for the BJP-led NDA – with a clear and emphatic majority by a margin of around 80 seats – and around 92 seats for the Congress-led UPA, the NewsX-Netapoll, at the opposite end of the spectrum, predicted 242 for the former and 164 for the latter, and, thereby, a hung parliament with the NDA enjoying a clear advantage.¹³
It is specifically in this context that the second signal, which was more implicit, became significant. Reproduced below is an introductory comment²² to a mail posted by this analyst on May 21, 2019.

“Considering the provisional figure of 67.11% of polling this time, it’s a rise of 0.71% points over the preceding poll in 2014 (66.40%, as reported by the wikipedia).2014 itself had seen a jump of a rather phenomenal 8.50% points from 57.90% in 2009 (as reported by the wikipedia).The outcome was that since 1984, for the first time, a single party did won an absolute majority, even if it had fought the poll in alliance with a few others and its vote share of 31.34% was the lowest ever for a party winning absolute majority.

The fact that the voting percentage has further gone up, even if only marginally, would tend to indicate a wave, given the phenomenal jump in the preceding poll.The only plausible candidates available to cause a wave are Pulwama/Balakot and anti-minority prejudices or anger.The Nyaya (read: NYAY) in any case, meant only for the bottom-most 20% of the populace which is the most difficult to be accessed, is hardly a competitor.The other likely candidate could be strong disaffection with the present dispensation – the hoax of “Acche Din”.But, that would have, normally, brought the polling percentage down, not pushed it up.

By the way, exit polls, almost unfailingly, miss the magnitude of a large swing. But, all these are, admittedly, speculations.One will have to wait for the 23rd, just two days away.”

In the event, the NDA won 353 seats and the UPA 91.¹³ That is pretty close to the projections made by the India Today-Axis poll, placed at one extreme end of the spectrum of exit polls.

The Drivers
In 2014, the BJP, fighting as an opposition party, had polled 31.34% of the votes.It may not be too irrational to assume that, by that time, it had built up a rather stable/core support base of at least around 20% of the voting population – about 2/3rd of its total votes polled.In 2009, it had polled 18.80% votes, in 2004, 22.16% votes and in 1999, 23.75% votes. In 1998, its vote share was 25.59%, in 1996, it was 20.29% and in 1991,it got 20.04% of the votes.^{17, 23}Thus, around 20% of the voters may be taken to be rather steadfastly committed to the ideology of “Hindutva” – an Indian shorthand for Hindu nationalism/supremacism.

The last time, Modiwas able to garner around 10% additional points over and above its (presumed) core support base.The reasons, as it appeared then, were mainly the following:

Rampant corruption indulged in by the outgoing UPA-II and, the preceding, UPA-I. This public perception of the prevalent corruption was triggered by the CAG reports issued around then, and some court cases. It was, further, sharply aggravated by the agitation led by Anna Hazare – an ex-military man, paraded as a Gandhian – collaborating with a Hindu Yoga guru-cum-entrepreneur having a large fan base, Baba Ramdev, and aided by among others, his then lieutenant ArvindKejriwal.
The consequent “policy paralysis” on the part of the government, as trumpeted, especially, by the corporate media.
Modi being able to raise and communicate these issues from his campaign platform, with telling effect, and his promise to end corruption, bring back black money – accompanied with the alluring assurance of depositing Rs 15 lakh in every poor/salaried person’s bank account.²⁴
This was further accentuated by his call of “SabkaSaath, Sabka Vikas!”²⁵ (With All, Development of All!). Also tersely captured in the slogan of “Acche Din!”²⁶ was a promise of better days to come.
All this gained considerable credibility based on the skilfully constructed and forcefully propagated narrative of “Gujarat (the state of which Modihad been the Chief Minister for well over a decade by then) model of development”.²⁷
Last, but not the least, was the resort to (accentuated) communal polarisation, in a calibrated and targeted manner, aided by the Muzaffarnagar riot in western UP.²⁸

While the collapse²⁹ of the “Acche Din” promise should have had effected significant erosion in the floating votes gathered last time, Pulwama-Balakot, or rather the (concocted?) narrative³⁰ built around it, aided by a conniving EC and blared ad nauseam by the obliging, and “patriotic”, media – the electronic even more so – made it a sure fire game changer.The ruling party, in a way, got merged with the (brave) armed forces of the country.Modi claimed, and got, full credit for the (presumed) resounding slap delivered by the Indian forces in the face of Pakistan.He would thus urge the (first-time) voters: “can your first vote be dedicated to the veer jawans (valiant soldiers) who carried out the air strike in Pakistan? Can your first vote be dedicated to the veer shaheed (brave martyrs) of Pulwama (terror attack)?”³¹“Ghar Me GhusKe Marunga“³² (I’d finish you off, by invading your holes!) – the shrill cry emanating from the Indian Prime Minister, was, arguably, the most emblematic campaign line of the Modi-BJP camp.

The main opposition in the field, the Congress, found itself utterly helpless. It could neither challenge the narrative – that might have had proved even more disastrous – nor posit an alternative narrative with matching appeal, more so, given the biased nature of the media.The “NYAY” – in any case, ostensibly directed at the bottom-most 20%, the most difficult to be accessed, was just no match, even if one sets aside the issue of credibility.

Despite the, apparently, spirited fight-back, the inevitable has happened. A wave of nationalist jingoism unfailingly helps a right-wing party, particularly, if in power.Thus,Vajpayee had scored a clear victory in the 1999 poll, on the back of the Kargil War – facilitated by a monumental failure of the military intelligence on the Indian side – despite the far premature and ignominious collapse of the coalition government led by him. He would, however, suffer a defeat, next time (2004), unaided by any such surge, despite successfully running the coalition, this time round.

Moreover, no factor is a stand-alone entity.The surge of jingoism emerged out of the latent, or even overt, feelings of animosity towards the (hated) “other” – the Muslims – persistently cultivated³³ by the regime.The surge only helped to cross the tipping point, to propel the voter to vote for Modi/BJP, despite all his glaring fiascos,particularly on the economic front.

Reproduced below is a rather longish, nevertheless worth citing, extract from a recent write-up³⁴ carried by a South Asian journal.

Five years later, barring qualified progress in some areas – toilets, roads, renewable energy, cooking gas – Modi’s promise of vikas has turned out empty. Even governments we rate below-average have arguably delivered similarly spotty progress, as in the preceding UPA regime. Make in India, Skill India and Digital India mostly remain slogans. Demonetisation showed the gaping idiocy and dangerous autocracy in Modi’s decision-making, which callously overruled the advice from experts that only a miniscule amount of black money was in cash. Far from raising India’s prestige and soft power in the world, the press in Europe and North America mostly brackets him and his movement with dubious figures like Trump, Putin, Ergodan and Bolsonaro. Modi has said the climate is not changing, our tolerance for the weather is. He holds asinine views about ancient Hindu feats in genetic science and cosmetic surgery. Despite a historic windfall from low oil prices, he now presides over a deepening farm crisis, an economic slowdown and the highest unemployment in 45 years. Vikas?

In 2014, Modi ran on a platform of vikas but mostly delivered Hindutva. In 2019, he ran on a platform of Hindutva, with little talk of vikas, smart cities, betibachao, black money, or Skill India. In 2019, Modi wore his religion on his sleeve. He and his party incited fear of the ‘other’ and made dog whistles and thinly veiled threats of violence and genocide. He gave LokSabha tickets to noted communal bigots of the RSS, including one who calls Godse a patriot. So what can we rationally expect from Modi this time? Even less vikas, I think, when the mandate is clearly for Hindutva, paving the way for the far right’s dream of a Hindu Rashtra, a state legally conceived not as secular but a Hindu polity and whose structures and institutions are based on the forms and priorities of Hindu culture and religion.

So how did Modi win this time? A big part of the answer is the powerful opium of Hindu nationalism. The BJP won because a great many Hindus are high on Hindutva. The SanghParivar has learned to exploit the well-known cultural inferiority complex of the Hindu middle class, which grew out of India’s colonial encounter with Europe. Alongside, they stoke fears that a billion-plus Hindus are under siege by Muslims, refugees, leftists, Pakistan and pesky “anti-nationals.” The well-funded propaganda arms of the BJP and SanghParivar spread a lurid and manufactured sense of historical hurt, key to sustaining Hindutva nationalism. Run by an army of paid trolls, they fan both hate and pride by peddling fantasies of past greatness, military might, superpower dreams, surgical strikes and fake news. The ordinary Hindu’s sense of history is now filled with malicious lies and manufactured resentments against pre-colonial Muslim rule and he wants to settle the score by punishing today’s Muslims.

During the voting season, I’d predicted that BJP’s decision to lead with Hindutva and its cynical post-Pulwama airstrikes would be a winning strategy. It more than offset their failures on the economy – a trick that countless demagogues have tried. Stated differently, the BJP’s actual performance on the economy became irrelevant against the joys and psychic highs of Hindu pride and nationalism, which the BJP stoked, playing the people like a fiddle. The BJP turned hate and anger into an animating, intoxicating and rallying force – risking the unleashing of even darker forces that, in time, they may not be able to control. Among other big contributors to the BJP victory were a brazenly partisan media that stumps for Modi and cultivates support for authoritarian rule; high octane propaganda on social media; and a hopelessly divided political opposition, who undercut each other’s votes in India’s first-past-the-post system.

That’s fairly comprehensive.
However, it does appear to severely underrate, though not outright overlook, the salience of the Pulwama/Balakot factor³⁵ in the last poll.In fact, with the Election Commission very much on his side³⁶, Modi further accentuated its effect, making mincemeat of the Model Code of Conduct, via a nationally televised address to announce the successful firing of an anti-satellite (ASAT) missile in the outer space – the first time for India³⁷, when the poll process was already on.(In fact, it looks rather miraculous that for the bulk of post-poll analyses – across the lines – Pulwama-Balakot which were so very glaring, almost just never happened!)

Consequent to the stirred up jingoist surge, Modi could further reinforce the strongman (56” chest) image of himself – built up assiduously over the last five years using the official machinery to the hilt.³⁸

Other than that, another analyst³⁹ puts a spotlight on three (presumably decisive) factors: Money (highly asymmetric access to financial resources largely engineered via a controversial Act, legislated through stealth, for the specific purpose⁴⁰), (Electronic Voting) Machine and Media ( acting, by and large, as a partisan player).⁴¹The point made regarding the EVM is, however, pretty much controversial⁴².

The social media, manipulated by a huge troll army, also, predictably, played some part⁴³.Apart from toilets (under Swacch Bharat) andUjjwala (cooking gas for poor households) – as mentioned in the extract reproduced above, regardless of patchy performance, the PradhanMantriKisanSamman Nidhi⁴⁴ also appears to have played a role. As did the rural housing scheme⁴⁵. But these sundry factors – including 10% reservation⁴⁶ for “economically backward” members of the castes/groups not till then covered by the provisions of “reservation” – in themselves, cannot but be anything more than minor add-ons.

The main and, in fact, the only national opposition – relentlessly campaigning against the ruling Modi/BJP – the Congress party, presented a fairly decent poll manifesto.⁴⁷But, with its limitations of resources, in terms of finance, as compared to the ruling party, organisational structure and, perhaps most importantly, the way it was treated by the mainstream media, it failed to reach out.

Apart from that, its masthead slogan – AbHoga NYAY⁴⁸ (Now Justice Will Be Done) – had, apparently, a basic design flaw. One, the NYAY scheme, meant to give out substantive cash doles to the (economically) bottom-most 20% households held no promise for the rest 80%. Two, it had the issue of credibility⁴⁹ – whether it could be really implemented, given the financial constraints and structural limitations of government machinery. Three, it might have even evoked adverse reactions, in various degrees, from the rest 80% – envy from those just falling beyond the limit and the rest – better off ones, in particular – conceiving it as a waste of their “hard-earned” money. Fourth, the bottom-most 20% is, in any case, are conceivably the most difficult to be accessed.

Its main attack line against the BJP was: ChowkidarChor Hai!⁵⁰ (The Watchman Is A Thief!). It was, primarily, based on the visibly murky Rafale jet deal steered by none other than Modi himself. But, the roles played by the Supreme Court⁵¹, the CAG⁵², the financial watchdog, and, most of all, the media⁵³, turned out to be pretty much unhelpful. Consequently, it also failed to find a resonance.

The failure of the opposition parties to form a united national alliance,a la 1977, to confront the BJP – apparently, quite a non-feasible proposition – eventually mattered rather little.⁵⁴

Just stunned by the official outcome, some of the opponents – both party and non-party, of the regime have claimed that the BJP victory has been engineered by the EVMs being tampered with by the ruling party.⁵⁵This, however, has been rather compellingly negated⁵⁶ by one analyst running a fact-checking website⁵⁷ and enjoying considerable reputation for objectivity despite his known leftist political inclinations⁵⁸.The same issue(s) had been dealt with in even greater details⁵⁹ by an expert, associated with the opposition CPI(M)⁶⁰, drawing similar conclusions:

It is not our argument that Indian EVMs are hack proof. No machine built by anybody, however competent they are, can be made free from hacking by skilled hackers. We have argued that it will require physical access to the machines – whether in the factory or outside – to carry out this hacking.

As we have described in detail while discussing the administrative procedures, the EVMs have to pass the various verification procedures that involve representatives of political parties. These checks require that political parties understand and have an informed participation in these processes. Apart from physically verifying the EVMs, there are also randomisation procedures that involve the presence and participation of political party representatives.Therefore, hacking such a system can be done only with a massive conspiracy, and with either the wilful participation of the opposition parties in this conspiracy, or their complete ignorance of what is going on.

Nevertheless, the final conclusion drawn by this author needs be taken with all seriousness and implemented.

Finally, elections must not only be fair but also seen to be fair. Therefore, our argument is that the ECI must not use the VVPAT as just an ornament forced on it by the Supreme Court, and do a token verification. It should do a real verification by tallying the paper slips of the VVPATs with the electronic count in the EVM. Only then will the ECI be able to put to bed the suspicions people have of their votes being hijacked by a ghost in the machine.

Moreover, the process of filing complaints on observing discrepancy between the button pressed and the paper trail displayed needs be made more complainant-friendly than it is now.There should also be mandatory counting of all paper trails where the winning margin is 1%, or below, of the total votes polled.

Lastly, a look at how the voters have voted.

The votes cast, as is well-known, are anonymous.Even then, surveys by non-government institutions are carried out to explore the profiles of the support base for various contesting parties.At least three noteworthy analyses⁶¹ are available in the public domain. These are not congruent.Yet, the essential point that emerges is that the BJP has, this time, further consolidated Hindu support, across caste divides. But, it, nevertheless, still enjoys more support from the rich and upper castes, even though there has been a sharper rise in case of lower castes, including Dalits, and Adivasis. In stark contrast, little support from the non-Hindus – 10% or thereabout.

All in all, Hindutva in combination with Modi’s carefully constructed image as a strongman riding on the upsurge of jingoism triggered by the narrative built around Pulwama-Balakot, trumped his rather dismal failure on all other fronts and very much neutralised the opposition campaigns.

The roles played by the (supposedly neutral) Election Commission and the mainstream media were, apparently, of huge significance. Also the grossly disproportionate access to financial resources.

Of course, Tamil Nadu and Kerala are the two most glaring exceptions. There are a few others as well.But, the BJP virtually swept the heartland, except in Punjab.

What Now?
As far as the opposition camp is concerned, the first response to the defeat is dismay and disarray.

The main opposition party Congress, with its President, Rahul Gandhi, announcing his decision to quit his post regardless of the urgings to the contrary by its highest decision-making body, Congress Working Committee (CWC), is still in turmoil.⁶²Others also appear to be rather nonplussed. The case of the West Bengal Chief Minister is an illustrative example.⁶³

The Muslims, the bete noire of the BJP (and its ideological anchor organisation, the RSS), are, apparently, dispirited. Some eminent Muslims have, reportedly, written⁶⁴ to the Prime Minister welcoming his address on May 26 to NDA MPs and offered “utmost cooperation” to him in reaching out to the community.Another, known name from the community, has, on the contrary, in a reasoned and spirited appeal⁶⁵, urged the community to make common cause with “liberals, social democrats, socialists, communists, large sections of the underprivileged, the poor, and sections of scholars” in the fight for dignified survival. Obviously, all these are indicative of the ongoing turbulence within.

The BJP – the Modi-Shah duo, in particular, is, obviously, only too elated.Modi is taking this opportunity also to refashion the organisational power structure.⁶⁶What, however, is far more germane in anticipating the developments in the coming days is that the BJP/RSS has a project – to supplant the “secular” and “democratic” Indian state with a “Hindu Rashtra” (Hindu nation state) – the contours of which are, understandably, not etched in stone, but, even then, would mean complete negation of substantive democracy and pluralism. Of still greater salience, the journey towards it has got to be propelled by constant stirring up of hatred and violence against the constructed inimical “others”, in order to mobilise the Hindus as “Hindus”, drowning out all other competing identities.⁶⁷

Taking off from that basic proposition, the new regime is likely to have two major focal points on the “political” front⁶⁸:

Dismantling of all opposition – both party and non-party.Towards that end, dislodging, maybe even dismissal, of, at least a few, opposition-run state governments;ED, IT, and CBI raids on opposition politicians and also, in some cases, buying them out can be expected. All this leads to tightening the screw, so to say, in a myriad ways – including enhanced digital surveillance, also with regard to the civil society organisations and dissenting individuals.
Sharply spiking communal polarisation by way of (phased?) nationwide roll-out of the NRC⁶⁹, also scrapping of Art. 370 (and Art. 35A)⁷⁰ and putting to good use the Mandir-Masjid issue(s)⁷¹, as per the demands of the situation.
Other expected developments are:
(i) Further intensification of non-state physical violence.⁷²

(ii) Mega sale of PSUs.⁷³
(iii) “Economic reforms”.⁷⁴
(iv) Stepped up trashing of environmental norms and safeguards.⁷⁵
(v) Tightening the grip over the education infrastructure and institutions.⁷⁶
(vi) Further defanging of watchdog institutions.⁷⁷
(vii) More repressive laws, if felt necessary.

While the actual (detailed) work plan will evolve and be calibrated, based on the perceived ground situations, and be punctuated with some measures to project a “people-friendly” image⁷⁸ – to confuse and divide the potential opposition – there is little scope that the general direction would be anything significantly different from the one sketched out above.

It would no longer be business as usual, not even by the standards of the last five years.

Conclusion
Modi 2.0 presents us with the real and looming threat of the dismantling of an”India” – embodying the values of “democracy”, “pluralism” and “egalitarianism”, that had been wrought out in the crucible of the epic freedom struggle, and which, finally emerged on the August 15, 1947 – all in pursuance of a project to supplant it with a “Hindu Rashtra” (Hindu nation state). This is sought to be achieved by mobilising the Hindus of India as “Hindus”, drowning out all other identities linked to language, culture, gender, caste, class etc., and constantly stoking hatred and violence against the constructed inimical “others”.Regardless of all the (innumerable) flaws and shortcomings that “India” – real and even notional, – encapsulates, the success of the above project would prove to be an unmitigated disaster for the vast majority of the people inhabiting this land.

What could offer at least some chance to avert such a predicament is a broad front/fronts consisting of political parties, as many as possible – including their associated mass organisations, and non-party civil society organisations – based on the common agenda of saving democracy/democratic rights and unity of the country. This should be backed actively, by right-minded, otherwise diffused, individuals and should be in addition to the ongoing and futurevarious specific issue-based struggles taken up by various constituents in their own ways – unitedly or independently.

Determined and consistent resistance has got to be offered on all available terrains – including parliamentary, legal, media (both traditional and new) and the streets, and in all available political and civil spaces. It is, admittedly, a stupendous task given that

the regime has the levers of the state power under its control – providing it with a disproportionate advantage to set and control the narrative (Pulwama-Balakot being a graphic illustration), and
theregime has found not too inconsiderable success in vitiating the “Hindu” psyche, via persistent and diligent work, by the RSS and its myriad affiliates, over decades and decades.
Moreover, much of the “opposition” may start melting away even before the real fight starts.

However, one has no option but to hope against hope and fight back.

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EVM Virodhi Rashtriya Jan Andolan calls for Election Boycott

Thu, 13 Jun 2019 15:27:55 +0000

Alleging EVM-VVPAT manipulation, EVM Virodhi Rashtriya Jan Andolan called for Election Boycott on 12th June, in upcoming elections of Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand and Sikkim, if they are not conducted using ballot papers.

Experts like Justice Kolse Patil, Feroze Mtthiborwala and G.G. Parikh spoke about the process, showing videos and presentations, that brought to light how EVMs are hacked, false votes are displayed and the secret softwares that enable hacking.

Do people of India, too, doubt the outcome of the recently held general elections?

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Dalit Movements felicitate two elected Dalit MPs from Tamil Nadu

Wed, 12 Jun 2019 05:04:12 +0000

Of the seven elected MPs from Tamil Nadu, two MPs are from the Dalit community from VCK (Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi).

Image courtesy: Newsminute

These two MPS Dr Thol. Thirumaavalavan,M.A., B.L., P.hD, President Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK, or Liberation Panthers Party) and Hon’ble Dr. D. Ravi Kumar, ,M.A., B.L., P.hD, General Secretary, Viduthalai ChiruthaigalKatchi (VCK, or Liberation Panthers Party) were facilitated jointly on 8^th June 2019 at Andhra Bhawan, Ashoka Road, New Delhi by National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR), National Dalit Watch (NDW), All India Dalit Rights Forum (AIDRF) and A.P Bhavan SC/ST Employees Welfare Association.

There are more than 250 MPs from dominant castes. Therefore the victory of these two Dalit MPs is very significant for representing the issues concerning Dalits in Parliament.

Dr. Ramesh Nathan (General Secretary, National Dalit Movement for Justice) said that this is a moment of great pride for the Dalit community that despite the tough competition and increased popularity of BJP Party in other parts of India, still VCK party managed to win in Tamil Nadu. The ideology of Dr.Thol. Thirumaavalavan and Dr. D. Ravi Kumar are very relevant to fight against caste system, untouchability, atrocities and caste feudal system.

Dr Thol. Thirumaavalavan and his party singularly raised their voice against the Sanatan Dharma and mobilised the voters to Save Democracy in Tamil Nadu.

Dr Thol. Thirumaavalavan has once again proved his mettle as the most charismatic leader of the present generation of Tamil and Dalit politics. He represents not only the political aspirations of the populous Dalit community in the State, but also ensured of the Tamil Dalits living across the world. He has again emerged victorious for the second time from the Chidambaram constituency.

The emergence of Dr. Thirumavalavan onto the Tamil political landscape dominated by Dravidian politics was a historical watershed for subaltern politics. His emergence as a political leader in the post-1990 Ambedkar centenary era is a significant moment in the history of Tamil and Dalit politics.

The other Dalit MP, Writer D. Ravikumar, the party’s general secretary, is a former M.L.A, who has a number of literary works to his name including Venomous Touch: Notes on Caste, Culture and Politics and has written passionate critiques of casteism. He has intellectual and political standing and has made several policy interventions when he was elected as MLA from Kattumannarkoil constituency in 2006.

Dr Ravi Kumar, a great writer on Dalit struggles and aspirations said that he is fighting for numerical strength, financial strength and political equality of Dalits. He said that he will take up the issue of ‘Reservation in Universities’ in the coming days.

On the occasion of the felicitation, Mr. N. Paul Divakar, Chairperson, Asia Dalit Rights Forum-ADRF, Ms. Beena Pallikal, General Secretary, DAAA-NCDHR, Rev. Dr. Vincent Manoharan, National Convener, National Dalit Christian Watch, Rev. Dr. Vincent Manoharan, National Convener, NDCW,Ms. Shabnam Hashmi, Social Activist, ANHAD, Mr. Anand Rao, Assist. Commissioner, AP Bhavan and National Convener, AIDRF ,Prof. Sugumar, University of Delhi, Rev. Fr. Vijoy Kumar Nayak, Secretary, CBCI, Hon’ble Sr. Anastasia Gill, Member, Delhi Minority Commission Adv. Franklin Caesar, Supreme Court of India, Father Denzil Fernandes Executive Director Jesuit Indian Social Institute were present.

Courtesy: Two Cirlces

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The “massive mandate” of 2019 and the role of the Election Commission

Mon, 10 Jun 2019 05:03:23 +0000

This is the elephant in the room, is it not? Was this “massive mandate” of the Lok Sabha elections 2019, the result of a free and fair election? Should we continue to discuss this outcome – the scale of the BJP victory, the numbers of seats, the margins by which seats were won – through political analysis alone?

Rather, has not political analysis of the election become inevitably deeply influenced by these margins and these numbers of seats, by the scale of the sweep? In other words, the analysis is of necessity post facto, assuming that these seats have actually been won fairly, and therefore represent the views of the electorate.

I found very revealing a story by two Reuters journalists who covered rural North India extensively. Mayank Bhardwaj and Rajendra Jadhav ruminate on how they could have gone so wrong in assessing the mood of the electorate. Although they say they never thought Modi would lose this election, it looked certain that he would return with a reduced majority. There was nothing they heard and observed on the ground that suggested the actual outcome. They conclude that next time they will travel even more, push their respondents harder, “be more aware of our limitations.”

Many seasoned journalists have the same sense of shock. But what if they were not wrong after all?

The day before results were announced, BJP told opposition parties to “accept defeat with grace”, after exit polls predicted a BJP sweep. Exit poll predictions were treated as the results themselves. Did the BJP leadership know something we don’t?

After Phase 6 of the elections, Amit Shah declared that after traveling across the country and gauging the mood, he was confident the party would cross the 300 mark. And so it did, by 3 seats. One did wonder at this mood that he gauged so accurately, given empty seats at rallies for Adityanath, Modi, and Shah in Gujarat, UP, Bihar, Chandigarh Karimganj, Guwahati. I list only a few.

Not to mention what preceded these elections – massive farmers’ agitations across the country, militant university campuses, country-wide demonstrations against lynch culture…
But Amit Shah knew almost to the number the seats his party would get. Even the RSS, with its massive ground-level networks, had no idea of what was to come, as was evident from Ram Madhav’s statement as late as May 7, saying the BJP will need allies to form government. (Or this could be characteristic Sanghi doublespeak, who knows.)

Let us begin this story then, with the infamous exit polls.

The dubious role of exit polls
The chances were very high that BJP would have emerged as the single largest party, and formed government with its allies in an NDA formation. Many serious political analysts expected this as a best case scenario both from the point of view of BJP, as well as its opponents.
However, exit polls though they varied, went much further, predicting a sweep by the BJP. The lowest number of seats for BJP predicted by exit polls was ABP- AC Nielsen with 267, just short of a majority.

Of course, at least one exit poll (India Today – Axis My India ) that predicted a BJP sweep (339 to 368) was rife with so many errors that very soon it took down seat-wise data from its site. Assembly constituencies in Uttarakhand were named as Lok Sabha constituencies; Congress shown as winning from Chennai Central, a seat it did not contest; the prediction for Sikkim Lok Sabha seat was changed.

Other exit polls too made huge mistakes:
News 18-IPSOS exit poll gave the Lok Janshakti Party between 5-7 seats while it contested only 6 seats in Bihar.

Times Now- VMR exit poll predicted that AAP would win 2.9% vote share in Uttarakhand while the party did not have a candidate from the state.

The methodology used in these polls was not clear. For instance, India Today said the question it asked was about popularity of the party, not about the candidate. Very much in keeping with the current wisdom that every vote for BJP was for Modi, not for the actual candidate. This has now passed into common sense, again post facto.

The methodology claimed by the India Today poll does not in fact stand up to any sort of scrutiny.

Never mind these details though, at the end of the day it was declared that India Today-Axis My India got the result “spot on” – although it was off by a minimum of 36 seats.

But to return to exit polls. What purpose do they serve? One, if they predict the right (not necessarily correct) outcome, then the Sensex is happy and makes money, satta bazars make money.

Two, how was it that despite such major errors and shoddy methodology, exit polls were largely correct in predicting the sweep? Where and how did they get the information they put out, and most importantly – was the intention of the exit polls to make the results seem credible?

Do doubts about the electoral process deny the validity of political analysis?
No, of course not. The very fact that the Opposition had to unite all over the country in different kinds of alliances if they were to defeat the BJP tells us that there are significant long term shifts in India that we need to recognize, not the least of which is the power of Hindutva that the RSS has been working on steadily for a hundred years, and the discourse of macho nationalism (dushman ke ghar ghus ke vaar) after the Pulwama attack and the Balakot air strikes.

Then there are the weaknesses of the Congress; the local rivalries between CPM and Trinamool in West Bengal; the micro level caste arithmetic the BJP supposedly pulled off to win UP; the benefits that sections of the population derived from some government schemes and so on. All of these are valid factors that we should be alert to of course, but these would explain BJP becoming the single largest party without a majority; they do not necessarily explain the scale of the victory – the number of seats, the margins in each seat.

Especially as after the exit polls there was complete silence on the indubitable failures of the Modi regime – the all time low on employment front; destruction of the informal sector after demonetization; state owned banks drowning in bad debts to crony capitalists; agrarian distress, targeted attacks on Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims by Hindutva-based gangs, the overall climate of fear and uncertainty. None of these were invoked even to express surprise at the results, which were suddenly presented as inevitable. “Consolidation of Hindus” and “popularity of Modi” became the go-to answers for the conundrum of the scale of the sweep. In fact, the sweep is not even seen any longer as a conundrum requiring an explanation. But if religious community identity and caste identity are primary explanations for the BJP’s victory, then since these identities are not going to change, and Modi presumably has a long life ahead of him, election results are fixed for the foreseeable future.

But survey information is not self-evident – it has to be read and interpreted, there are corollaries to every feature of a survey. Take the Hindu-CSDS Lokniti post-poll survey, arguably the most credible one. It shows that support for BJP rose across all Hindu castes and communities, from 36 percent in 2014 to 44 percent in 2019. Adding the NDA allies, the support went from 43 percent to 52 percent of Hindus polled.

But if 48% of Hindus are not voting for BJP or its allies, then Hindutva did not succeed with the community as a whole; for instance, in Kerala where it is understood that on the back of Sabarimala, it was Congress that gained, not BJP, precisely because the vote was not a Hindutvavaadi vote. And on the other hand, we cannot assume that it was Hindutva that led to votes for NDA allies such as AIADMK, JD-U, Shiromani Akali Dal, Naga People’s Front, and Pattali Makkal Katchi.

Nor are all the votes even for BJP itself, necessarily pro-Hindutva, especially if we are taking seriously the “micro-management of caste” argument about BJP in UP, for that involved concrete material benefits of different kinds, both constitutional and extra constitutional. Take this report that says:

…unlike the west UP where there were attempts of a subtle communal polarisation through debates of ‘Ali vs Bajrangbali’ and a slight jingoistic appeal for Hindu nationalism through exaggerated claims about national security and Pakistan bashing, the campaign narrative has been more around caste appeal as the election moved towards east UP. It’s for this reason that Prime Minister Modi on multiple occasions reminded of his “most backward caste” credentials and also tried to converge caste dynamics through common agenda of poverty.

Also, in this kind of situation, when the non-Yadav OBCs and non-Jatav Dalits vote for BJP, it is not necessarily a vote for Hindutva, but against Yadav domination through SP and Jatav domination through BSP.

As for non-Hindus, the percentage of Muslims voting for BJP remained the same at 8 percent in 2014 and 2019, Christians voting for the BJP went up from 7 to 11 percent, and among Sikhs, declined from 16 to 11 percent. The distinctly lower percentage of non-Hindus voting for BJP is not surprising given its anti-minority stance, but evidently, other factors than Hindutva come into play locally, or else these figures cannot be explained.

So while we need to understand the role of Hindutva in the rise of support for BJP, treating it as the final definitive answer is effectively a closure of our minds to the ways in which the BJP as opposed to the RSS, has to function as a political party seeking votes.

Is there a ‘Level Playing Field’? BJP’s extra-constitutional advantages in elections
We cannot continue to discuss the elections as if all parties are functioning in more or less an equal manner with regard to resources – especially with regard to the use of official machinery. The situation has dramatically transformed in the last 5 years in particular. India is no longer the democracy, however flawed, that it has been till 2014. Let us recognize the disproportionate muscle power the BJP wields during elections in terms of funds, its control over the media and through the subversion of all constitutionally mandated institutions that it has achieved.
Funds

Prashant Bhushan notes that there are no limits on spending by political parties and no compulsion on parties to receive and spend money only through banking channels. These lacunae benefit the BJP the most, a clear indicator of the kinds of policies it promises and enacts.
According to the Association for Democratic Reforms, an elections think-tank, BJP received 73.5 percent of the combined declared income of the seven largest political parties in the financial year of 2017-18.

Bhushan points out in addition to the above, “three retrograde changes” in the law of election funding that have increased the role of money power and corporate hijacking of elections.
a) The Foreign Contribution Regulation Act brought primarily to prevent parties, candidates and public servants from getting and being influenced by foreign funds, has now been amended (2016) to allow receipt of foreign funds through subsidiaries of foreign companies.
b) The limits on corporate donations to parties and candidates which was earlier 7.5% of their profits has been removed to allow unlimited corporate funding (2017).
c) The introduction of electoral bonds in 2017, which are bearer bonds allowing anonymous funding of political parties even through banking channels. Bhushan points out that electoral bonds clears the way for payment of bribes by corporations to the ruling parties. The BJP, unsurprisingly, has received about 95% of the approximately 2000 crores of the funding through electoral bonds in the last 2 years since they have been introduced.

What this means is that the BJP has to pay back, not voters, but its funders, through policy measures. For instance, within five months of the Supreme Court judgement declaring Aadhar linking cannot be mandatory for bank accounts and mobile phone connections, the BJP cabinet promulgated an Ordinance to allow for “voluntary” use of Aadhar for both. An Ordinance was necessitated as the Bill, delayed by lack of sanction in the Rajya Sabha, would have lapsed with the previous Lok Sabha. Hence the Ordinance was hastily passed one month before the Lok Sabha elections – so urgent was the need to pacify the corporates!

Or, take the permission given to Adani in March 2019 to conduct open cast mining in Hasdeo Arand in Chhatisgarh, one of the largest contiguous stretches of very dense forest in central India.

There is a reason why the BJP’s pockets are very, very deep and dark.

Control over media
What has been described by some commentators as Modi’s masterful “control over the narrative” is in fact near total control over the media – through ownership by direct BJP supporters or by those with vast business interests who want to please the government for quid pro quo’s, or who at the very least, don’t want to rub the government the wrong way; or through fear and intimidation and blackmail, or monetary benefits. Some editors who generally stand up to this pressure are still forced from time to time to toe the line.

For instance, on the very day of the 7th and final phase of polling, the otherwise usually balanced Indian Express published a front page interview with the Prime Minister, who is not exactly known for placing himself for scrutiny before the media. In this interview that ran over three pages, Modi added “Khan Market gang” to the other gangs that roam India-that-is-Wasseypur – the tukde tukde and the Lutyens, at last count.

Or take the India Today story that lists 5 reasons that got Narendra Modi another term. These “reasons” are simply BJP claims, listed baldly as claims – the Modi government claims to have built so many toilets, it claims to have distributed so many gas cylinders; it claimed Balakot as a victory of its strong muscular policy towards Pakistan, and so on. In other words, BJP’s press handouts and/or confidential chats with journalists are being treated as facts. Of course, one is grateful for the overwhelming number of times the word ‘claim’ is used in this story. Many others simply report such claims as facts.

Nikhil Inamdar has discussed at length the death of Indian media at the hands of the Modi regime, including through arm-twisting non-compliant media proprietors.

Raiding news channels, boycotting prime-time debates, and stopping government advertising—a significant source of revenue for the industry—have been among the common tactics used by the Modi regime.

The use of social media to target critics and mobilize public opinion, and well funded and organized trolling are part of the BJP’s arsenal. The BJP has also been openly selective in handing out TV licences to new applicants, controlling who enters the fray. Unwillingness to toe the line has often led to high-profile editorial sackings.

In May 2018, a sting operation by an outfit called Cobrapost showed that some 25 of India’s leading media organisations, including giants like The Times of India, The New Indian Express, and the India Today Group were willing to participate in propaganda for the BJP. Other outlets recorded in the sting, even agreed to spread communal hate in return for cash from the ruling party.
The sting was in some sense reflective of the extent to which the institutional nexus between mainstream media and the government had strengthened under this regime and possibly a harbinger of what was to come post-Pulwama.

Inamdar is referring to the way in which after Balakot air strikes,

India’s television stations dispensed with even basic journalistic rules, as seasoned reporters declared unequivocal allegiances and experienced editors parroted exaggerated claims. Theatrics abounded, with toy-gun toting warrior anchors in army fatigues drumming up an atmosphere of hate and violent jingoism.

In short, media narratives except for a few well known exceptions, are practically crafted by the BJP PR department.

Judiciary
Prashant Bhushan discusses in detail the way in which every institution has been subverted by the BJP – the CAG, the CBI, the Central Vigilance Commission and the Lokpal.

But in the context of elections, the institution that matters the most after the Election Commission, is the judiciary, upon whose independence there has been a determined assault by this government. The attempt to bring back the executive into the role of selecting judges through the Judicial Appointments Commission was scuttled by the Supreme Court, but this government has still attempted to block appointments of judges recommended by the collegium, by just “sitting on those names that it finds inconvenient”. It has also refused to appoint inconvenient judges whose appointments have been reiterated repeatedly by the SC collegium.

The proverbial “clean chit” issued to Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi by the “in-house” committee of the Supreme Court set up to enquire into a charge of sexual harassment against him, and the spirited defence of him by Union Minister Arun Jaitley, does not augur well for the independence of the highest court in the land. Especially as immediately after the CJI was cleared of all charges, a Supreme Court bench headed by himself issued notice to advocates Indira Jaising, Anand Grover and their NGO Lawyers’ Collective on a PIL seeking court-monitored SIT probe into an alleged Foreign Contribution Regulation Act violations. It may be noted that Jaising claims she is being victimized for having spoken up against the illegalities in the enquiry against Justice Gogoi.

This stranglehold that the Sangh backed Modi regime has over multiple institutions in the Indian polity cannot merely be remarked upon, as if once noted, it can be business as usual for Indian democracy.
These factors have to be recognized as decisively shaping BJP’s electoral victory, for this is the kind of control over and subversion of all institutions that the BJP has been able to establish.

And now, to the conduct of the 2019 elections.

Election Commission, EVMs, ‘ghost voters’ and much else
Let me make it clear that we can only raise questions based on the scattered information available to us. It is not our job as citizens to offer proof of wrong-doing of the highest institutions in the land, when these institutions function in so opaque a manner. It is our job to raise questions about visible anomalies. It is the responsibility of the Election Commission to explain the anomalies. This is also the responsibility of the government, but I have no expectation that this government, riding high and arrogant on the back of its “massive mandate”, will take heed of the voices raising questions, except perhaps to discipline us in various ways, or charge us with sedition.

There are four questions here that need to be addressed.

Internal functioning of the EC and bias it has shown
Whether EVM’s are immune to hacking as claimed
What is the explanation behind the missing EVMs as revealed by an RTI. This is linked to the question of “tally mismatches” or “ghost voters”.
The mass deletion of voters’ names

1. Biased EC.
The EC issued “clean chits” to Modi and Shah in cases of multiple blatant violations of Model Code of Conduct, which was challenged by Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa. He was not only overruled but it was decided that dissent notes would not be recorded. Lavasa then recused himself from meetings of the EC. The complaints on MCC violation included the Prime Minister saying in a speech that his government kept Pakistan on its toes to secure the safe release of IAF Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, and his appeal to first-time voters in Latur to dedicate their first vote to “the Pulwama martyrs”. Lavasa had also wanted the EC to issue a show-cause notice to Rahul Gandhi over his “chowkidar chor hai” slogan but in the meanwhile a BJP Minister took it to the Supreme Court as a matter of contempt, which was admitted and heard by the court, leading to an apology by Rahul Gandhi, so the EC did not need to act on it. The EC also ignored the continued operation of Namo TV and refused to recognize the open and blatant use of religious and anti-Muslim rhetoric in the campaign by the ruling party.
The internal functioning of the EC evidently is far from democratic. Majority decisions are being pushed through, and minority opinion buried. These majority decisions were largely to the benefit of the government.

Openly biased EC. Check.
2. Are EVMs immune to hacking.
The Election Commission says no, Indian EVMs cannot be hacked. So all the arguments about EVMs being given up the world over, due to their susceptibility to hacking, are irrelevant to India. The reason the EC gave in support of their confidence was that the micro-chips used in Indian EVMs are One Time Programmable (OTP). So they cannot be tampered with. Nevertheless, despite this confidence, they refused to permit a public examination of EVMs, and when put under pressure, in 2017 agreed only to a four hour test which most parties boycotted.
There are three points we need to take up.

a) It transpires that the EC did not provide correct information when it claimed that the microchip used in Indian EVMs is One Time Programmable (OTP).
Two public sector companies manufacture EVMs – BEL and ECIL. The microchips for all Indian EVMs are however manufactured by companies in USA and Japan. According to Rajat Moona, Member, Technical Expert Panel on EVMs, EC, blank chips are imported by BEL and ECIL, then the source code is developed and programmed by them and coded on to the EVM chip.

Venkatesh Nayak obtained information through RTI in May 2019, which revealed that :
The micro-controllers (computer chip) embedded in the BEL-manufactured EVMs and VVPATs used in the current elections, are manufactured by NXP – a reputable multi-billion dollar corporation based in the USA.
While the ECI continues to claim that the micro-controller used in the EVMs is one-time programmable (OTP), the description of the micro-controller’s features on NXP’s website indicates that it has three kinds of memory – SRAM, FLASH and EEPROM (or E2PROM). A computer chip which includes FLASH memory cannot be called OTP.

Read Nayak’s detailed piece on his RTI enquiry and the answers he received here. He could not get information on which companies manufacture chips for ECIL, which was refused on grounds of confidentiality.
If the chips are not OTP, it means they can be reprogrammed.
b) Secondly, add to this the information that there appears to be a connection between one of the US based companies that manufactures microchips for Indian EVMs and the company that benefited from the Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation (GSPC) scam while Modi was Chief Minister of Gujarat. According to the CAG report, Geo-Global Resources, a private company listed in Barbados and based in Ahmedabad, was taken as the private exploratory partner without any transparent bidding, and also offered 10% stake in GSPC. The start-up company was preferred over ONGC. The CAG report found that the exploration activities undertaken by the GSPC along with Geo-Global Resurces led to a government loss of over Rs 20,000 crore and did not result in any fruitful oil production.

Janta ka Reporter states that (i) Geo Global Resources Inc is a subsidiary of Key Capital Corp, a financial group in USA, and (ii) the ownership pattern of Key Corp and Microchip Inc, USA that manufactures microchips for the EVMs used in India is strikingly similar.

Is there then, a connection between a company that was unduly favoured by Gujarat government under Modi, and one of the companies that manufactures EVM micro-chips for India?
The EC in its FAQ, published by the government’s publicity department, PIB, says, ” The Software Programme Code is written in-house, by these two companies (BEL and ECIL) , not outsourced, and subjected to security procedures at factory level to maintain the highest levels of integrity. The programme is converted into machine code and only then given to the chip manufacturer abroad”.

The doubt raised by Janta ka Reporter is that since the microchip manufacturing companies in the US and Japan deliver microchips in a sealed condition, for security, even the EC is not in a position to verify if its original programme code, prepared by its scientists at BEL and ECIL has been modified.
c) Third, VVPATs, the paper audit trails that act as independent verification for EVMs:
(i) why was the EC so resistant to VVPATs for the 2019 elections conceding only when forced to by a Supreme Court order?
(ii) Why did the Modi government try and pressurize the EC to buy VVPATs from private sources?

The Law Ministry sent three letters, between July and September 2016, seeking EC’s views on the suggestion, as Indian Express learnt through an RTI. The Express story adds:

Documents show this suggestion had its origins in a meeting held in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) on July 11, 2016.

Nasim Zaidi, the Chief Election Commissioner at the time, firmly turned down the suggestion as it could hurt the credibility of the election process.
(iii) Why did EC resist even 50 percent verification of VVPAT after the polls, before declaring results, accepting only 5 booths per Assembly constituency?

The reason EC gave for not accepting 50 percent verification, was the laughable one of “delay in the declaring of results”. Surely a delay in declaring results (after such a long drawn out election process) is preferable to accepting the possibility of “malfunctioning” on a large scale?
Rajendran Narayanan and Nikhil De make the irrefutable ethical point that statistical sampling is simply not sufficient to check “malfunction” in the case of elections, where every single person’s vote is meant to count:

There are approximately 10.35 lakh EVMs used in this election and so even according to this model, the way the EC is conducting the so called “audit” runs the risk of many undetected errors. Correct counting of votes cannot be left to chance and so statistical estimation and random sampling in the context of counting of votes should not even be an option. The right to a secret verified ballot is the most fundamental right of a citizen, and the verified slip, and not the opaque EVM machine should be counted as that ballot, otherwise it is akin to the state surreptitiously stealing the most fundamental right of a citizen. Counting anything less than 100% of the VVPATs must ideally be deemed unconstitutional.

**************************************************************
In the light of all this information in the three points above, the innumerable stories from 2014 onwards, of “malfunctioning” EVMs (and all of them malfunctioned in the same way – by lighting up for lotus whatever the button pushed) need to be revisited.
I actually cannot list them all here, a quick search reveals far too many cases reported in the media. And often, it is not a single EVM, it’s several. In Karnataka Assembly elections, it was 2400! In Kairana Lok Sabha and Noorpur Assembly by-polls in 2018, the EC dismissed claims of “malfunctioning” EVMs, claiming they were “briefly affected” by the heat.

And remember, this is not an exhaustive list of even the instances reported in the media, it is merely the tip of the iceberg.

Some complaints were “found to be false”, others proved correct and repolls ordered.

In one case at least, that we know of, the claim of malfunctioning EVM was “proved false” by asking other voters present, not by checking the machine itself. In Muzaffarnagar, a BSP worker Dara Singh, was booked for “spreading rumours”, and the SDM told the Indian Express:

Singh told us that he has been informed by two-three voters that on pressing any button of their choice, the vote was going to BJP’s symbol. We cross-checked the information with other persons who had cast their votes and the allegations turned out to be false. Since we got confirmed information that Singh made false allegations, we did not check the EVM machine. Today, I filed a complaint with the police to lodge an FIR into the matter.

A “malfunctioning” EVM need not malfunction every single time, nor would voters who pressed the lotus have experienced any malfunction. So “asking other voters present” is at best a lackadaisical, and at worst a motivated, way of looking into such a serious complaint.
The fear of arrest as provided for in the law, if a claim is “not proven”, stopped even a former top police official from lodging a formal complaint:

Former Assam DGP Harekrishna Deka has alleged that the voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) machine at a polling booth in Guwahati had malfunctioned as the machine displayed some other name and not the one he had voted for. Mr Deka, however, said he did not lodge a formal complaint fearing punishment if the claim is not proved.
“I don’t want to take the risk,” he said adding, “How do I know how will it be proven?”

And as has been pointed out innumerable times in the course of this debate since 2014, it is not necessary to tamper with every single EVM to win an election, it is possible to do so strategically, using information that most parties, and especially the BJP, have about specific booths and constituencies.

The Caravan carried a story that in March this year, the Election Commission filed an affidavit before the Supreme Court that “made blatantly false claims”. The affidavit claims that there had not been any mismatch in the VVPAT and EVM tallies conducted in the past two years, and that the EC had only received one complaint about a VVPAT recording an incorrect vote since 2013. However, the story goes on to establish the large number of such complaints that have in fact been recorded.

Rigging through switching Ballot Unit and Control Unit numbers
At local level polls, less technologically advanced stratagems have been adopted to rig EVMs. For instance, in February 2017 in Pune, in which BJP swept the civic polls, RTI activist Vijay Kumbhar explained that:
As per procedure, the EVMs were checked, randomised, allotted booth and sequence wise, and sealed in presence of the authorities, candidates or their representatives, and a representative of the EVM manufacturing company on February 15, six days before the voting. The randomisation implies allotment of Ballot Unit (BU) and Control Unit (CU) numbers to corresponding booths, with the BU and CU charts given to the candidates or their representatives. The sequence of candidates was also set on the same day.
“However, on the actual polling day [February 21], when the polling staff opened ballot units, the serial numbers were different from those recorded and sealed on February 15,” said Mr. Kumbhar.
The rules plainly stipulate that a ballot unit be connected to the control unit according to a particular sequence allotted to them.

“Changing that sequence is tantamount to an exchange of votes among candidates. Just how anyone could have access to sealed machines is anybody’s guess…” said Mr. Kumbhar.
I might add that the first doubts about EVMs were raised by the BJP after Congress won in 2009. The Huffington Post story linked to above is written in that context. That the doubt was raised first about Congress does not in any way reduce the validity of the questions we raise. Any party is capable of trying to rig an election. It is we citizens who must be vigilant.

“Malfunctioning” (rigged?) EVMs. Check.
3. ‘Missing’ EVMs.
This mystery is related to two other serious issues during the 2019 elections –

the as yet unaccounted for movement of EVMs in private vehicles in different parts of the country , which the EC has not satisfactorily explained; and
the mismatch between the ECI figures for voter turnout and EVM votes cast.

These are in fact, pending issues from 2014. In Banaras, the site of the Kejriwal-Modi contest, for example, where Kejriwal lost by over 3 lakh votes, there were reports of EVMs turning up in odd places. For instance, a Sector Magistrate took some machines home and his son took photographs of the EVMs in his bedroom, and posted them on Facebook. We have no idea of what the follow up to this was, nor about the scale of the tampering during the 2014 elections.

A case was being heard in the Uttarakhand High Court in 2018, regarding EVM tampering in at least 6 constituencies in the Assembly elections of 2017, which I have been able to track till April 2018, when the next date for a hearing was set as May 4, 2018. All the while, of course, the BJP government continues its regime.

At one point, the Uttarakhand High Court even issued a gag order on criticism of EVMs. Because of course, that is the problem – drawing attention to anomalies in the election process.
Let us come now to 2019.

(i) The missing and fugitive EVMs.
A series of RTI applications by Manoranjan Roy regarding the number of EVMs produced by BEL and ECIL and the numbers received by the EC, revealed major discrepancies (19 lakh ‘missing’ EVMs) and he then filed a PIL in the Bombay High Court, hearings on which have been going on for about 13 months now.

Venkitesh Ramakrishnan in a carefully documented story in Frontline outlines the “glaring discrepancies” highlighted by the RTI documents procured by Roy

…in all three operations—procurement, storage and deployment—and also pointed to grave financial irregularities to the tune of Rs.116.55 crore. The documents, submitted as “exhibits” to substantiate the arguments of the PIL, brought out huge disparities between the accounting of the number of EVMs the ECI had received over a period of time and the supply records of the manufacturers. They show that nearly 20 lakh EVMs that the manufacturers affirm to have delivered to the ECI are apparently not in the latter’s possession. Neither the ECI nor the SECs have been able to throw light on the issue of the missing EVMs despite seven hearings of the PIL over the past one year.
Roy’s petition also raised grave doubts about the movement of EVMs from one State to another without proper records such as their number, serial number, model number and mode of transportation. It pointed out that the absence of proper systems and infrastructure too could lead to misplacement of EVMs along with misappropriation of funds. Even on the question of destroying old EVMs, there is no clarity, it stated.

Further, it has emerged that no audits have been conducted by the State Election Commissions of Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh on EVMs.

On April 5, 2019, the court directed the ECI to file its replies to Roy’s queries on or before the next hearing on April 23, 2019. In a characteristic delaying mode, no reply was filed before that date. The court stayed proceedings on the petition for two weeks, and the next hearing has been scheduled for July 17.

The EC sent a response to Frontline, to which Ramakrishnan responded. The two main points in his response are:

ECI says Frontline has “selectively quoted some information obtained by an individual through RTI applications from multiple public authorities and a PIL filed in the Bombay High Court”. The obvious mismatch between the data given by “multiple public authorities” is precisely the problem. “On a matter as crucial to the democratic process as EVMs, the public expectation is that the ‘multiple authorities’ would come up with exactly the same number.” But the ECI response makes no effort to explain the mismatch, which, if it occurred due to clerical errors in any of the institutions, would have been mentioned in the response.
The ECI response asserts that “the commission has a robust EVM management software (EMS ) through which the status of every EVM/VVPAT can be tracked on real time basis and only first level check cleared EVMs , properly logged in EMS are used for poll- purpose”. Despite such claims, Ramakrishnan points out, there have been regular media reports about the discovery of EVMs in places such as hotel rooms, which the EC has not explained.

We know that the EC’s response to all such reports – see also here – showing unsupervised transportation of EVMs is that they were spare EVMs, but why was there such a large volume of movement of spare EVMs just before counting, in such an informal, unsupervised manner?
Further, The Quint reports that

The Election Commission of India (ECI) had mandated real-time GPS tracking of all vehicles transporting Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). However, a day before the election results were declared, the Commission in response to an RTI query, said it has no information in “any material form” related to the GPS data and movement of these vehicles.

In its response to Roy’s petition, the ECI also declared that it had no information about the possibility of any EVMs being delivered to the State Election Commissions (that conduct local body elections), as these are autonomous of the ECI. Does this mean there are no centralized figures available as to how many EVMs reach the ECI and how many the SECs? This is a very casual way of accounting for so critical a commodity to the functioning of a democracy!

But if SECs are completely autonomous to the extent that the ECI does not even know how many EVMs are delivered to them, how to understand the inexplicable and controversial directive by the Election Commission of India in May 2017, restricting BEL and ECIL from selling EVMs to State Election Commissions? The matter was discussed during the all India conference of State Election Commissioners, held in November 2017 and a copy of the minutes of the meeting was received in reply to RTI query, which revealed that the State Election Commissioners objected to this directive, as “Different designs of EVMs for use by the ECI and SECs, will further create confusion both among the voters and the political parties about the use and credibility of the machines.”

If the SECs are autonomous of the ECI, then how could ECI take decisions regarding supply of EVMs by BEL and ECIL (also autonomous of the ECI) to SECs? And what was the intention?
(ii) Mismatch between figures of voter turnout numbers and EVM votes cast.
Two detailed and exhaustive stories in NewsClick and The Quint pointed out significant discrepancies in these numbers available on the ECI site, with votes recorded as counted, being in excess of votes recorded as cast. The Quint found serious discrepancies in the two sets of data in 373 constituencies which went to polls in the first four phases of the election, while Newsclick found similar mismatches in several Lok Sabha constitutencies , including including three high-profile ones – Patna Sahib, Jehanabad and Begusarai.

In response, after several days of silence, (and after taking down the votes polled data from its site after receiving questions from The Quint), the ECI said in a rambling statement on June 1, 2019, that the figures were “provisional”. Please remember that the far-from-provisional government had already been sworn in the day before. Well over a week after declaration of results, and after the government has been sworn in, the figures were “provisional”?

The Quint spoke to former chief election commissioner OP Rawat about the discrepancies. He said:

Prima facie, it appears to be a serious issue. I am not aware of any such occurrence (where votes polled didn’t match with votes counted) in the past, that is, during my tenure as chief election commissioner.”

Please note that in Rawat’s tenure as CEC, in 2018, there were by-elections to the Lok Sabha, elections to the Rajya Sabha, elections to legislative assemblies of eight states and numerous other by-elections to state legislative assemblies and councils.

Three former CECs to whom NewsClick spoke also said they were surprised at these discrepancies. H.S. Brahma who headed the Election Commission in 2015, told Newsclick that discrepancy of up to, say, a couple of thousand votes could be understood because sometimes there are issues with postal votes. “But anything more than that needs to be investigated and explained,” he added.

Here is a comparison of constituency-level “votes polled” & “votes counted” data prepared by Vidyut on aamjanta.com, for each Constituency in which elections were held during the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections.

It contains constituency level voter turnout data only for the first 6 phases because only this data is available on the ECI site.

For the seventh phase, there is only state level data on turnout… Yes, that is correct. The Phase of election in which India’s Prime Minister as well as several other cabinet ministers were elected to Parliament does not have ANY constituency-level turnout data available. Not before counting, not before government formation, not even after government formation.
The green ticks indicate that there is a possibility that the data is accurate (if the mismatch in total is caused by another constituency and not the one with the tick), while the red crosses indicate that the EVM votes counted do not currently match ANY voter turnout data provided.

Meanwhile, the “final turnout” data has been deleted by the ECI and replaced with provisional data.

What are we to make of this saga of statistical manipulations?

Are the missing EVMs somehow coming into play here?

Some at least of my generation must feel we are living inside the Costa Gavras film Z, a thriller about deep levels of conspiracy and massive corruption in the political establishment, in which idealistic citizenry take on a fascist regime…

Statistical chicanery by the ECI. Check.
4. Large scale deletion of voter names
During 2014 elections in Banaras, the opposite was the case. the Navbharat Times reported that 3,11,057 fake voters had been discovered in Varanasi, where Modi had won by a margin of 3,71,784 votes.

The ECI claimed that the person who wrote the story had “understood it in a wrong perspective”. There were not 3 lakh bogus voters, but 6.47 lakhs repeated names, an official claimed. The ECI’s explanation was that these are not all necessarily fake entries in the rolls. They could be people who share a name. “For instance, a ‘Rajesh, son of Ramesh’, might be found several times in UP,” an official said. “We are in the process of checking whether these people are same or different.”

The question is, when the process was to compare both the voter’s as well as his/her father’s name with other voters, how were 6.5 lakh duplicate names found in a constituency with 17 lakh voters? And why was this exercise being carried out after the crucial Lok Sabha elections?
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, a survey found that in Uttarakhand, 12-13 per cent of the total electorate was disenfranchised by their names being removed from the voter list, of which 90 per cent are Dalit and Muslim voters.

In Delhi, the names of many long-time residents, including a retired government employee, were found missing in the voters’ list.

In Karnataka, too, there were reports of large numbers of long-time voters not finding their names on the list and so being unable to vote. More than 5 lakh voters were deleted from the Bengaluru electoral rolls between May 2018 and January 2019, while only around 4 lakh new voter names were added.

Similar complaints of missing names came from UP; from Mangaluru; from Tamil Nadu (where it was claimed that Muslim and Dalit names had been deleted); and missing names and bogus voting were reported from Mumbai.

Manipulation of voter lists. Check.
Conclusion
Let me reiterate. India is not the democracy, however flawed, that it was up to 2014. There have been deep tectonic shifts in the functioning of the state. Has the functioning of a robust democracy protected by its institutions and a Constitution, for over 70 years, weakened our capacity to fully assimilate the extent to which all these have been subverted in so short a time? For instance many well- intentioned people with no love lost for the BJP, still defend EVMs with all their hearts – their belief in technology as neutral, their belief in statements and claims made by the ECI, their resistance to a “conspiracy theory of history”.

True, all of history cannot be explained by conspiracies. But this does not mean there are no conspiracies in history!

There has been rigging and booth capturing before. But make no mistake, this is of a different order altogether.

As alert citizens we need to take stock seriously now. We need to remember that the first and last time the election of a Prime Minister of India was set aside (by a High Court Chief Justice) in 1975, was for misuse of government machinery for election campaigning; for violation of the Model Code of Conduct, in short. How laughable those grounds seem now.

Now, in 2019, when an IAS officer on poll duty in Odisha checked the Prime Minister’s helicopter, he was suspended; and a large black box that was whisked out of a helicopter in which the Prime Minister arrived in Karnataka and put into a private car, remains unexplained. Remember also that the Prime Minister has sworn on affidavit to educational qualifications that till today remain unverified because of the resistance put up by Delhi University authorities,

During these elections of 2019, we have seen the complete collapse of the EC under pressure from the government; the strong possibility of EVM manipulation and replacement of EVMs; the consistently higher number of votes cast over number of voter turnout; mass, often selective, deletion of voter names; legal changes to permit huge amounts of unaccounted money to pour into one party’s coffers…

Immediately after the 1975 judgement by Justice Sinha (who withstood all pressure to deliver it), Indira Gandhi declared Emergency. The rest as they say, is history. Emergency was resisted across India with great courage and personal sacrifices, and India Gandhi defeated in the elections that followed.

What will the future say about this moment of the “massive mandate”?
Large numbers of active citizens are speaking up, more and more of them, thanks to social media and a few media outlets that remain independent. How should we act upon all the information that is emerging?

There is no doubt we are at a perilous watershed in the history of our democracy. I think we all know this.

First published on https://kafila.online/

The post The “massive mandate” of 2019 and the role of the Election Commission appeared first on SabrangIndia.

WB post poll analysis: Saffron fades as one heads South along the Bangladesh border

Tue, 04 Jun 2019 03:45:22 +0000

Sabrang India has discovered that even though the BJP has made some serious headway in West Bengal, its emergence in parliamentary constituencies along the Bangladesh border throws up an interesting pattern. While the BJP has won in the northern constituencies, it has lost in all but two of the southern ones. Also, while a split in the secular vote is responsible for the BJP victories, TMC has summarily trounced its opponents obtaining huge winning margins in the southern constituencies along the border.

We have been conducting post poll analyses of voting patterns in different states across India and if the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) coveted one state the most, it was West Bengal. Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well as BJP president Amit Shah made more visits to this state than even their own home state of Gujarat! The party cadres also worked towards not only mobilising voters, but also keeping their rival TMC cadres on their toes. Their efforts paid off and the BJP improved its tally in the state from a measly 2 in 2014, to 17 in 2019!

But what was even more surprising was how the party won seats in several communally sensitive regions along the border with Bangladesh, especially in light of Amit Shah’s statement suggesting minority populations in the region comprised infiltrators who were like termites. While there are whispered allegations of CPI (M) cadres working to support BJP candidates, one cannot ignore the three and often even four cornered contests in some of the constituencies. The votes won by INC candidates were often greater than or equal to the difference between the BJP and TMC’s candidates. CPI (M) candidates have also won large chunks of the vote in many constituencies.

But it is interesting to note, that though the BJP won the northern constituencies along the border, the further south we go, the vote became progressively anti-BJP. Also, although many of the BJP victories have been due to the splitting of the secular vote, the TMC victories are more decisive with wider margins. Let us have a look at how the border constituencies, which have significant minority or tribal populations, voted. We examine them from North to South.

BJP wins in three cornered electoral battles in the northern border constituencies:
Cooch Behar: In this constituency BJP’s Nisith Pramanik won, mainly due to the division of the ‘secular’ vote. Cooch Behar voted in the very first phase of the elections and Pramanik won 7,31,591 or 47.98 percent of the votes. TMC’s Paresh Chandra Adhikary was close at his heels with 6,77,363 or 44.43 percent of the votes. Had All India Forward Block’s Gobind Chandra Ray (46,810) and INC’s Piya Roy Choudhury (28,215) not played spoilsport, TMC could have won this constituency.

Alipurduars: John Barla of the BJP secured 7,50,804 or a whopping 54.4 percent of the votes here, leaving behind TMC’s Dashrath Tirkey who won 5,06,815 or 36.72 percent of the votes. Barla, an Adivasi, interestingly started sporting a saffron turban ever since he filed his nomination papers. He told The Statesman, “I never wore such ‘pagri; on my head before. My supporters made me wear this on the day I went to submit my nomination papers at the Alipurduar district election commission office, and I decided to wear it all the time during my election campaigns. I am an adivasi by caste and a pagri can attract attention of the voters.” This appears to be doubly disturbing as it not only exoticises an Adivasi, but also saffronises his identity for greater acceptance.

Jalpaiguri: Even here the secular vote got divided between TMC, CPI (M), INC and the BSP. While BJP’s Dr Jaynta Kumar Roy won 7,60,145 or 50.65 percent of the votes, TMC’s Bijoy Chandra Barman who won 5,76,141 or 38.39 percent of the votes would have had a fighting shot had others like CPI (M) candidate Bhagiratha Chandra Roy (76,166), INC’s Mani Kumar Darnal (28,562) and BSP’s Jiban Krishna Majumar (8,134) not cut into his vote share. This shows that this constituency had a large number of secular voters, but was lost to the BJP only because the opposition parties failed to unite and come up with a joint strategy.

Darjeeling: In this constituency voters gave BJP’s Raju Bista a decisive mandate with close to 60 percent of the vote. Even the combined votes won by the INC’s Sanakar Malakar (65,186), CPI (M)’s Saman Pathak (50,524) and the TMC’s Amar Singh Rai (3,36,624) would fall miserably short of his huge lead. This wasn’t completely unexpected though given how the Bimal Gurung faction of the Gorkhaland Janmukti Morcha as well as the Gorkhaland Nationa Liberation Front, both supported the BJP candidate, who interestingly doesn’t even belong to the state. Raju Bista is from Manipur! Meanwhile, he BJP for itself had only mentioned in its manifesto that that it would recognise 11 sub-tribes of Gorkhas as Scheduled Tribes, conveniently skirting around the wider Gorkhaland issue. But it remains to be seen if the matter would be allowed to fester and tensions will boil over once again like in 2017 when 14 people were killed and normal life completely thrown out of gear during a violent 104 day strike.

Raiganj: Even in this constituency the TMC candidate lost because a large chunk of the secular vote went to the CPI (M) and the INC. BJP’s Debashree Chaudhuri won 5,11,652 or just over 40 percent of the votes. TMC’s Kanaiala Agrawal wasn’t far behind with 4,51,078 or approximately 35 percent of the vote. But the CPI (M)’s Mohammed Salim took away 1,82,035 votes, while INC’s Deepa Dasmunshi chipped away 83,662. Has the secular parties played it smart and thrown their support behind one consensus candidate, BJP would have found it harder to win this constituency.

Balurghat: It was an extremely tight race in Balurghat. While BJP’s Sukanta Majumdar won 5,39,317 votes, TMC’s Arpita Ghose was snapping at his heels with 5,06,024 votes! The gap was wafer thin and this is where the votes won by Revolutionary Socialist Party’s Ranen Barman (72,990) and the INC’s Abdus Sadek Sarkar (36,783) could have made all the difference.

Lines begin to blur in the two Maldahas:
Maldaha Uttar: The parliamentary constituency is often wrongly associated with the communal riots that took place in Kaliachak in 2016. But that region is actually located in the Maldaha Dakshin parliamentary constituency. Maldaha Uttar covers the assembly segments of Maldaha, Habibpur, Gazole, Chanchal, Harishchandrapur, Malatipur and Rauta. Of these the last four have majority Muslim populations. The candidates here also have an interesting background. Mausam Noor, who was elected MP in 2009 and 2014 was a member of the Congress. But she switched over to the TMC in January 2019. Noor ended up winning 4,25,236 votes. But the INC fielded her cousin Isha Khan Choudhry who won 3,05,270 votes. BJP’s Khagen Mumru gained in this three cornered contest and won 5,09,525 votes. The CPI (M)’s Bishwanath Ghosh also won 50,401 votes. Given the thin margins, it could have been anybody’s game in this constituency.

Maldaha Dakshin: This is the constituency where communal tensions had boiled over in the Kaliachak in January 2016. A protest march, against derogatory remarks about Prophet Mohammed allegedly made by Hindu Mahasabha leader Kamlesh Tiwari, had turned violent. The rampaging mob ransacked a police station, a block development office and destroyed public property including government and police vehicles. Since then, this region has remained under the scanner for it communal sensitivity. In the 2019 general elections, INC’s Abu Hashem Khan Chowdhury won by a very narrow margin in a three cornered fight with the BJP and the TMC. While Chowdhury got 4,44,270 vote, BJP’s Shreerupa Mitra Chaudhury was close at his heels with 4,36,048 and TMC’s Mohammed Moazzem Hussain got 3,51,353 votes. With such a thin margin, this constituency perhaps had the least predictable electoral outcome and it could have been anybody’s game.

Tide begins to turn as one heads south:
Jangipur: TMC’s Khalilur Rahaman scored a decisive victory here winning 5,62,838 or 43.15 percent of the votes. Even the BJP’s Mafuja Khatun (3,17,056) and INC’s Abhijeet Mukherjee (2,55,836) came nowhere close! CPI (M)’s Dr. Mohammed Zulfikar Ali also scored an impressive 95,501 votes.

Murshidabad: The TMC also won this constituency, leaving all rivals far behind. TMC’s Abu Taher Khan won 6,04,346 or 41.57 percent of the votes. The second highest number of votes went to the INC with Abu Hena winning 3,77,929 or 26 percent of the votes. BJP’s Humayun Kabir was summarily trounced winning only 2,47,809 or 17.05 percent of the votes and CPI (M)’s Badaruddoza Khan got 1,80,793 or 12.44 percent of the votes.

Krishnanagar: TMC’s Mahua Moitra clinched a decisive victory leaving the BJP trailing behind in this constituency. Moitra won 6,14,872 or 45 percent of the votes. BJP’s Kalyan Chaubey was close at her heels with 5,51,654 or 40.37 percent of the votes. Even the CPI (M)’s Shantanu Jha could not play spoilsport despite winning 1,20,222 votes.

Ranaghat: This is one of the only two constituencies along the southern stretch of the West Bengal – Bangladesh border where the BJP won. BJP’s Jagannath Sarkar won a whopping 7,83,253 or 52.78 percent of the votes. His closest contender was TMC’s Rupali Biswas with 5,49,825 or 37.05 percent of the votes. CPI (M) Biswas Rama got the third largest share with 97,771 or a measly 6.59 percent. The BJP’s victory here was a decisive one and not due to a fractured secular vote.

Bangaon: In this constituency again the BJP won by a margin of over one lakh votes! BJP’s Shantanu Thakur won 6,87,622 or 48.85 percent of the votes, leaving his closest contender TMC’s Mamata Thakur trailing with 5,76,028 votes. CPI (M)’s Alakesh Das seems to have taken away 90,122 votes, a significant chunk that would have ensured a tighter contest.

Bashirhat: In this constituency TMC’s Nusrat Jahan left everyone else behind by a wide margin of over 3,50,000 votes! She won 7,82,078 or 54.56 percent of the votes. The actor is the youngest MP elected this year and her closest contender in the constituency, BJP’s Sayantan Basu, trailed far behind with 4,31,709 votes. This was a decisive victory for the TMC with a huge margin.

Jaynagar: Here TMC’s Pratima Mondal summarily trounced BJP’s Dr. Ashok Kandary. While Mondal romped home with 7,61,202 votes, Kandary trailed far behind with 4,44,427 votes… a margin of more than 3 lakh votes!

Mathurapur: This is the southernmost constituency along the West Bengal – Bangladesh border and here too the TMC defeated the BJP with a wide margin of over 2 lakh votes! TMC’s Mohan Chaudhry won 7,26,828 votes, leaving BJP’s Shyamprasad halder trailing with 5,22,854 votes. Even here the CPI (M)’s candidate Dr. Sharat Chandra Halder won an impressive 92,417 votes to come in third.

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Forest Dweller rights missing from Election 2019 discourse

Fri, 31 May 2019 14:16:42 +0000

The Lok Sabha elections have concluded, results are in, and despite the decidedly anti-people’s policies of the previous Modi government, it has been voted in with a more decisive majority. In March 2019, SabrangIndia team had showcased a study which highlighted the 133 constituencies where a campaign for Forest Rights could have had an impact during poll season. We studied 86 of these constituencies, mainly on the basis of the criticality assigned to them by the study in terms of Forest Rights issues. The constituencies studied were critical value, high value and good value constituencies.

This issue had been brought to the forefront by the recent Supreme Court directive (February 2019) on land of forest dwellers and Adivasis and the failure of the Modi regime to defend the Forest Rights Act, 2006 before the Supreme Court. Worse it had plans to enact a draconian Forest Law worse than the colonial forest act of the 1920s. All the more reason for the Opposition to make the crucial issue of forest dweller and Adivasi rights a sustained and critical campaign in this general election. As the results show, the issue simply did not figure in the electoral discourse.

Take for instance Robertsganj in eastern Uttar Pradesh which saw a spirited if splintered battle. The margin between the winner from the Apna Dal (Soney Lal), Pakauri Lal Kol who polled 4.47,691 votes and Samajwadi Party’s Bhai Lal who got3,99,3304 votes is 54,387 votes. And the Congress with 35,222, the CPI with 17,445 and other candidates (from the ‘progressive opposition’) with 18,333, 11, 029 and 9120 together got 41,149 votes. A concerted campaign around forest rights cohesive against the ruling regime’s assault may well have dented this seat.

Critical Value Constituencies
Definition: These are i) tribal (ST) constituencies where more than 10% of the eligible voters are also potential Forest Rights Holders or ii) non-tribal constituencies where more than 60% of the eligible voters are also potential Forest Rights holders.

High Value Constituencies
Definition: These are i) tribal (ST) constituencies where more than 10% of the eligible voters are also potential Forest Rights Holders or ii) non-tribal constituencies where between 50%-60% of the eligible voters are also potential Forest Rights holders.

Good Value Constituencies:
Non ST Constituencies where potential forest rights holders voters are between 30%-50% of the eligible voters in the constituency

Type of Constituency	BJP	INC	Others
Critical Value Constituencies	23	2	6
High Value Constituencies	16	1	3
Good Value Constituencies	19	5	11

Tribals across several states had called for Bharat Bandh to protest against the Supreme Court order that might lead to mass-scale evictions of tribal and forest-dwelling families. Among the demands made is the demand for an immediate ordinance by the Modi government to correct the controversial eviction order of the Supreme Court delivered on February 13. The Congress, RJD, SP, AAP and Sharad Yadav’s party supported the bandh call. The order of the SC that was temporarily stayed a week later, after the Modi government was compelled to move the same bench for review had resulted in shock waves since its effect was that 1.3 million families living on forest lands, and nurturing them would have been evicted. Significantly, the case was heard for several years’ on a ‘PIL’ filed by wildlife groups.The Modi-led central government was criticised for not defending the Forest Rights Act of 2006, a liberative central piece of legislation.The FRA of 2006 recognises the earlier invisibilised rights of the forest dweller and is known as a ‘recognition of rights’ law. It was the first time that the Vth and VIth Schedules of the Constitution were given statutory teeth. Hence, Adivasis in states like Gujarat, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and other states in Northeast led a peaceful bandh on March 5. At the time and before, the BJP government was also criticised for its policies related to land acquisition and dilution of land rights of Adivasis.

Given this potentiality, there were possibilities of these seats giving a tough fight to candidates from the ruling regime. In many seats, important from the point of view of Forest Rights saw a direct face-off between the Congress andthe BJP. The shocker however is that a chunk of the vote went to the BJP. What does this show? That Adivasis and Forest Dwellers did not vote on what is most crucial for their survival but on other issues and identities? That the Congress failed to claim credit for its own emancipatory legislation, the FRA of 2006 brought in by the UPA I regime? That there was a division of vote?

Of the 86 constituencies analysed, the BJP has won by a larger margin as compared to 2014 in 37 constituencies. In another 22 constituencies, its margin reduced as compared to 2014, and in 28 constituencies where FRA 2006 has some influence, parties other than BJP won.

It does seem like the areas in which people’s movements were strong, either the BJP lost or its winning margins reduced significantly. A splintered and non-serious Opposition also fragmented the Opposition vote.

Bastar, Chhattisgarh which tops the chart of critical value constituencies seemed a shift of power from BJP to INC, with latter winning by a margin of 38982.

In Chhattisgarh’s Korba constituency, INC trounced BJP by 26349 votes. Last time, the BJP had won this with a small margin of 4265 votes.

Though the BJP won in the critical value constituency, Khunti, Jharkhand the winning margin was significantly reduced from 92248 in 2014 to 1445 in 2019.Earlier we had indicated that Khunti is a stronghold of Pathalgadi movement. It appears from the figures on the EC website that here in Khunti, the BSP was the ‘spoiler’ ( BSP Got 7663) and wining vote margin is only 1445.

Kandhamal in Odisha saw the reduction in winning margin of BJPby half. Here the winning BJD got 49% of the vote share, the BJP 33% and the Congres about 14%. Around 2% of the votes fell to NOTA.

In Telangana’s Adilabad, BJP came to power, winning by 1,12100 margin. Here in the Adilabad seat, the BJP Got 35% of the total votes while the TRS 29%, and the INC 29%.

West Bengal’s Jhargram, which is an ST constituency, the BJP came to power defeating All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) which had won last time. The BJP’s winning margin was 11,767 votes. Here in Jhagram, the BJP consolidated its position grabbing 44% of the votes polled while the TMC got 43%, the CPI 5% and the INC 1.5%.

In Maharashtra’s Raigad, NCP defeated Shiv Sena by 31,438 votes.In Maharashtra’s Shirur, NCP defeated Shiv Sena by 58483 votes. In MP’s Chindwara, INC maintained its hold but its vote share reduced to 37536 from 116537.

In Kerala, INC trounced CPI(M) in all seats relevant for forest rights such as Alathur, Palakkad, Alathur and Wayanad.

Jharkhand’s Singhbhum, which is an SC constituency and termed as a good value constituency and was recently in news for its poor record in malnutrition, saw INC trouncing BJP by over 70,000 votes.

Kanker in Chhattisgarhfamous for mining projects, saw BJP coming back to power but this time with a significantly reduced margin of 6914 votes as compared to last time’s margin of 35158 votes. In terms of criticality, Kanker features at second number in the Critical value constituency list with nearly 50% voters eligible for voting.

The results from various places require a deeper reflection on how the BJP was able to secure the Adivasi vote, if at all. Or did many Adivasis face challenges in voting?

Because of their traditional settlements, many voters did face the challenge of access, that is in actually reaching polling booths. At some places Adivasis chose to boycott elections because of the ever present state repression. A case in point was Khunti, the bedrock of Pathalgadi movement in Jharkhand. There were also reports of Adivasis being duped in the name of Ujjawala scheme prior to the elections. It was also that many of the opposition parties failed to put FRA prominently as their campaign agenda and despite Congress having enacted the law, it performed poorly in both 2014 and 2019 polls.

On February 28, the SC had stayed its order on eviction and posted the matter for hearing on July 10. States had been asked to file their responses on what was the process followed for rejection for the claims. While human rights defenders such as Roma had argued that the FRA, 2006 is not about rejecting but recognising land rights of the forest dwelling communities. The fates of several forest dwelling communities hangs in air right now and it seems like the struggle has to start afresh!

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Unravelling RSS’s women wing, Rashtriya Sevika Samiti’s election strategy

Wed, 29 May 2019 13:20:40 +0000

Now that the 2019 general elections have come to an end, with an unexpected landslide victory of the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), we have tried to analyze the role of its parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), in BJP’s massive victory.

There have been multiple debates and discussions on news channels over the strategy adopted by the BJP and RSS. Earlier, there were reports of RSS sending around 80,000 volunteers in nine states during the last three phases of the election. But what stands out this time, is the Sangh’s strategy to deploy its women volunteers in urban as well as rural areas to mobilize and influence women, albeit implicitly.

The women’s wing of RSS, Rashtriya Sevika Samiti, has been actively involved throughout the elections and has played a crucial role in the positive results. Though their work wasn’t publicized much, it is a strategy worth studying! We have found that the women’s wing was directed by the RSS leaders to handle the women voters, conduct meetings and discussions with them, while not directly telling them to vote for a particular political party. A RSS member along with his wife, who is a part of the women’s wing, on condition of anonymity, gave us an insight into their organisation’s strategy pertaining to women voters.

Directive of RSS to the women wing:
The Rashtriya Sevika Samiti were given special instructions this time. Giving details on the instructions, the woman member said, “Before the campaigns, the members of the women’s wing were given some tips on talking to the women voters. We were even provided with specialised and specific data that cannot be collected by the common man.”

While describing the instructions given to them, another woman member, again on the condition of anonymity, told us, “We were directed to hold small unofficial meetings in one household after every 10 to 12 households. Further, we were told to create awareness among women about their voting rights and appeal to them to take the decision in the best interest of the nation. However, we were advised not to directly appeal to them to vote for the BJP.”

Although the women’s wing didn’t explicitly request the women voters to vote for BJP, their meetings were designed to hint towards the Modi government and its policies. They discussed the various schemes launched during Modi’s regime such as ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’, ‘Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana’, ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’ among others.

It is significant to note that the women’s wing was also directed to visit the Muslim-dominated areas and speak to the Muslim women. However, they were advised to not enter into any scuffle with the residents.

Approach towards the urban women voters:
The woman member told us that the meetings were unofficial and were held over tea where general discussions on the welfare schemes used to take place. She then described the manner in which they used to appeal the women voters- “We are the citizens of this democratic nation and we have the right to vote. How should we exercise this right then? We then used to leave this question on them and start discussing women-specific schemes. We used to further tell them that irrespective of the religion or caste you belong to, we all will survive only if our country is secured. Who keeps our nation safe? Who is paying attention to the the needs of the women? They all then used to give one common answer (hinting at BJP).”

Further, during the evening, women used to gather in the nearby park and hold discussions on various welfare schemes. The discussions also included the Modi government’s fearless attacks on the terrorists, air strikes and surgical strikes.

Despite the Election Commission’s (EC) directive to not use the defence forces in the election campaigns, there is certainly no possibility of curbing such small scale discussions, irrespective of the huge effect they might have had.

Approach towards the rural women voters:
In what could be a very clever move, RSS strategically deployed its women voters in those rural areas where toilets were built under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan or houses under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana. Making the beneficiary women a precedent, the other women voters were shown how they will also benefit from these schemes and how a bright future awaits them. This way the existing as well as the potential beneficiaries were influenced.

Approach towards the Muslims women voters:
The women’s wing was advised to go to the Muslim neighbourhoods in groups for maximising the impact of these visits. The woman member said, “If only one person speaks then it is less effective. However, if an entire group is together making an appeal, people tend to listen.”

However, they were strictly told to not enter into any religious or communal discussions. Instead, they used to just appeal them to vote for the nation’s security.

Unravelling Rashtriya Sevika Samiti’s strategy:
While the strategy may appear to be very simple, but it has proven to be a very smart move by the RSS.

Firstly, the women wing, on the directions of the RSS, adopted a very safe approach of not naming any particular party so as to make itself appear as a neutral body working for the benefit of the target audience as well as the nation. The women voters were just made aware about their rights and the importance that it holds for our country’s future. Simultaneously, the ideology of RSS was also promoted.

Secondly, the meetings were given a very unofficial angle in the form of general discussions so as to not make it look like a propaganda. The discussions surrounded over the welfare schemes and then were smartly diverted to the Uri and Balakot air strikes.

Thirdly, every discussion would start with the appeal of voting in national interest. In the course of the discussion, even the target audience might have failed to notice the effect it was having on their thinking.

Thus, the RSS has played a crucial and influential role in the massive victory of the BJP, apart from it being the ‘citizens choice’. However, the concerns about unemployment, rising petrol prices, poverty, agrarian distress and many other things continue to prevail. Are we then entering in the sequel of ‘acche din’? Time will tell!

(The translation from the original in Hindi is by Bhumika Jain)

Original in Hindi:
RSS की चुनावी रणनीति: सेविकाओं ने संभाली थी महिला वोट की कमान

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Did people’s candidates ever stand a chance against the Modi wave?

Wed, 29 May 2019 12:53:39 +0000

Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Maharashtra. These three states have been at the centre of people’s movements in the last few years with farmers protests over loan waivers, onions, MSPs and forest rights. Many became spectacles that awed the nation and brought the government to heel. It would be obvious that if the leaders of these people’s movements stood up for election, they would win a decisive mandate. But it wasn’t so.

Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Maharashtra. These three states have been at the centre of people’s movements in the last few years with farmers protests over loan waivers, onions, MSPs (minimum support price) and forest rights. Many became spectacles that awed the nation and brought the government to heel. It would be obvious that if the leaders of these people’s movements stood up for election, they would win a decisive mandate. But this was not to be.

Amra Ram from Rajasthan is the AIKS vice-president and has been at the forefront of farmers’ agitation. He has contested all the Lok Sabha elections since 1996 but has never won.

Hours before filing his nomination on April 15, Amra Ram, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) candidate from Sikar, Rajasthan, said in a public meeting, “The government has money for the big businessmen. They have money for the Adanis and Ambanis. But what do they have for the farmers? Nothing. Which is why we farmers have to fight now.”

This public meeting happened in the same Krishi Upaj Mandi where the farmers from the Shekhawati region of Rajasthan, under the banner of All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), the farmers’ body of CPI(M), and led by Amra Ram, had created a massive movement that lasted 13 days, in September 2017. The farmers had protested demanding better prices for their crops, loan waiver, and relaxation in the strict rules that now govern the trade in farm animals. Farmers from the districts of Sikar, Churu, and Jhunjhunu sat in protest in the main markets, surrounded government offices, and blocked roads. After the 13-day long agitation, the Vasundhara Raje-led BJP government in the state was forced to give in to the farmers’ demands.

He got about 30,000 votes while the sitting BJP MP got around 8 lakh votes. Even Bollywood actress Swara Bhasker campaigned for Amra Ram in Sikar but this high powered celebrity-driven campaign did not convert to votes for the grassroots leader.

Congress won seven of the eight seats in Sikar in the previous assembly polls, with an independent candidate emerging victorious in the other. It fielded Subhash Maharia, a Jat candidate and a three-time BJP MP from Sikar, against the BJP’s Swami Sumedhanand Saraswati, the current MP.

In 2014, despite the Modi wave, Maharia fought as an independent candidate and was able to garner at least one lakh votes.

BJP candidate Sumedhanand Saraswati, who contested the Lok Sabha elections from the same constituency in 2014, on the demand of Baba Ramdev, won. However, the local leadership of BJP consider him an outsider as he hails from Haryana, and his candidacy had reportedly made them resentful.

On May 3, Modi addressed a public meeting in Sikar. He only talked about national security –not once referring to the agrarian crisis — once again using the Pulwama attack and Uri surgical strike to provoke the people. Modi has again and again used hyper-nationalism as a campaign weapon to garner votes. It sits well with his autocratic, strongman image. Even in Sikar, it looked like his main focus was on finding out how loudly the crowd could chant “Bharat Mata Ki Jai.” Clearly, this farmer dominated seat saw the vote fall prey to this hyped sentiment with farmers themselves overlooking their own hardships and issues.

While India’s reprisal action after the Pulwama terror attack impressed the families of youth recruited in large numbers every year from Shekhawati’s villages to the Army and paramilitary forces, farmers were unhappy over the incomplete waiver of loans by the Congress government in the State despite its promise. Farmers in the three Jat-dominated Lok Sabha constituencies have complained of banks rejecting their waiver claims.

Many a people’s candidate fielded by the CPI (M) has faced a similar fate.

In Dindori, Maharashtra, one of the farm leaders of the memorable Kisan Long March that made the Devendra Fadnavis govt take notice, stood up for elections. He could garner only 9% of the total votes and suffered defeat against BJP.

JP Gavit came in third in his Dindori constituency. He has emerged as one of the most hard-working and influential tribal leaders, having represented the Kalwan Surgana constituency seven times. He is both an Adivasi and a farmer. He was the driving force behind the two Farmers’ Long March, called by the CPI(M)-affiliated All India Kisan Sabha in the state over the last one year. He has been at the forefront of the farmers’ protests over the past two years, and is the lone leftist MLA in the assembly.

He was pitted against BJP’s Bharati Pawar (now MP) and NCP’s Dhanraj Mahale in this constituency reserved for ST candidates due to the significant tribal population.

The CPI(M) had been keen that the Congress and NCP set aside their claim on the seat as part of their plans of forging a greater opposition alliance in the state. Of the total six legislative constituencies that are part of the Dindori Lok Sabha seat, the NCP is in control of three and was unwilling to let go of its claim on the seat.

In Jharkhand, the Mahagathbandhan has been swept away like sand castles on a beach.

The infighting and refusal to give up seats for the greater good meant that votes and voter shares were divided. Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik) candidate, Pradeep Yadav, who was at the forefront of agitations against land acquisition for a proposed power plant promoted by the Adani Group, was painted as one who was opposed to the “real development” of Godda, his constituency. He had vowed to not let Congress win come what may when the grand old party refused to remove its candidate from the contest.

Senior member of the CPI(M) Brinda Karat told Sabrangindia how the entire election had been managed and organised by the Adani group. A clear example of how Indian democracy is now almost completely at the mercy of money power and corporate capital.

Godda, largely known for Lalmatia coal mines of Eastern Coalfields Limited, which helps run two super-thermal power stations in Bihar and Bengal, has been facing a serious problem of displacement due to land acquisition.

Even as the oustees clamour for compensation, there is another unrest brewing over the Jharkhand government’s approval to Adani Power Plant, intended to sell power to Bangladesh, which could add to the number of native oustees.

Pradeep Yadav in Godda received around 38% –an impressive number –of the votes against the 53% votes that the sitting BJP MP got. Many say he lost because Congress refused to leave the seat and cut into his vote share. The Congress seems to have played spoiler here, too.

The alliance of Congress, JMM, JVM and RJD was hoping to bag as many as eight seats by fighting together and ensuring the transfer of core and cadre votes across constituencies. But it did not work in the face of the proverbial “Modi Tsunami”.

In Godda, the BJP had worked on a strategy to counter the Muslim-Yadav combination of the Mahagathbandhan while simultaneously emphasising on the development initiatives of party candidate Nishikant Dubey. Even an alleged sexual harassment case was opened up against Yadav before elections.

Left’s flop show
Many people’s candidates who lost were fielded by CPI (M).

In West Bengal, a state ruled by the CPI(M)-led Left Front for 34 uninterrupted years, the party drew a blank in its worst performance ever and lost its deposit in 40 of the 41 seats it contested.

The CPI(M) played a pivotal role in government formation at the centre in 1989, 1996 and 2004, based on its stupendous performance in Bengal. In 2004, it bagged 26 of the 42 seats in the state, the maximum.

Since the formation of the CPI(M), following a split in the Communist Party of India (CPI) in 1964, the party never drew a blank in the state in Lok Sabha elections.

The CPI(M)-led Left Front, which ruled the state for 34 years from 1977 to 2011, has bagged a measly 7.8 per cent of votes so far, with its candidates being decimated to third and fourth spots in the seats it contested.

The CPI(M)’s slide in Bengal started from 2009 with TMC’s surge, and in 2014 it got only two seats.

Stunned by the defeat, most state CPI(M) leaders declined to comment but said it would introspect the results and take corrective measures. trends showed that the Left was virtually routed in its bastions of Kerala and Bengal. General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said it was time for the entire opposition to introspect.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) is led in two seats in Tamil Nadu — Coimbatore and Madurai — by more than one lakh votes each and one in Kerala by around 9,000 votes.

The results of the Lok Sabha elections dealt a blow to the Left parties which have already been on the decline across the country. The CPI(M) lost its last bastion of Kerala where it trailed in all seats it contested.

In 2014, the party had nine seats and the CPI one. By 12 pm on May 23, both parties together were leading only in five seats. This was a steep fall from the 2004 high of 59 seats. Both the parties are struggling to provide a credible justification for this decimation.

In the run-up to the elections, the Left parties struggled to find allies. CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury proposed to the Congress a “no-contest policy” in West Bengal. The Congress snubbed his proposal and going one step ahead fielded their party president Rahul Gandhi from Wayanad which swept away all the hopes that the CPI(M) had from Kerala too.

Barring Alappuzha, the Left was trailing in all the seats. The CPI(M)’s internal assessment was that they would get at least seven seats.

All eyes were trained on Begusarai in Bihar where the Left hoped for a miracle with CPI candidate Kanhaiya Kumar. While Kumar ruled the news cycle, he could not get enough votes to sail through. He was trailing at a distant second to Union Minister and BJP leader Giriraj Singh.

Tamil Nadu is the only exception as the Left was ahead in four seats.

Another Left party, the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), was leading in one seat in Kerala, where it is a part of the ruling Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF).

Ambedkar rising
The tallest leader of the people, a candidate who was the son of Indian soil through and through and gifted the country with its constitution could not win any election he contested. People’s candidates have seldom had such luck

Babasaheb Ambedkar contested in the Bombay North first Indian General Election of 1952, but lost to his former assistant and Congress Party candidate Narayan Sadoba Kajrolkar. He tried to enter Lok Sabha again in the by-election of 1954 from Bhandara, but he placed third (the Congress Party won). According to current terms, the Nehru wave then had taken away his chances.

“It is a strange phenomenon of India’s democracy, that one of its most distinguished sons, highly accomplished academically, a scholar and fearless leader and champion of the rights of the downtrodden, could not win a popular election,” Ajit Ranade wrote in Mumbai Mirror. Ambedkar still became a member of Rajya Sabha and served the country.

In 2019, his grandson has made a dent politically with the newly formed Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA.) The newly formed VBA garnered about 41 lakh votes in the Lok Sabha election. That is about 14% of the total votes polled in Maharashtra.

Prakash Ambedkar told News 18, “We secured about 41 lakh votes in this Lok Sabha election, which is about 14% of the total votes polled in the state. We have enough votes to get the status of a regional party.”

The emergence of a new party founded by Prakash Ambedkar, grandson of Dalit icon and social reformer BR Ambedkar, adversely affected the vote-share of the Congress in many seats.

In a country where caste-based voting seemed to have taken a back-seat over the issue of nationalism, Maharashtra witnessed a reverse trend.

A look at the vote-share showed that the Congress and its allies could have won from at least seven more seats where the VBA’s votes are more than the NDA candidate’s winning margin against the allies.

Maybe all hope isn’t lost for the people’s candidate, on the whole. However, faced with a legitimate or contrived ‘consolidation’ of the ‘Hindu vote’, any hope that Indian parliament and the state legislatures will actually see representative voices there seems like a very distant dream.

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