The Existence of Fake Voters Has Become a Reality. What Next?

The ugly spectacle of police crackdown on members of Parliament who were only marching to the office of the Election Commission of India (ECI) to submit a complaint should drag the citizens’ attention to the crisis of democracy in India.

Is the Narendra Modi system so fragile that it can’t handle a peaceful walk of less than one kilometer by the representatives of the people? The Prime Minister, having won three terms, has demonstrated both exceptional timidity and lack of faith in established democratic traditions.

Political scientist Francis Fukuyama wouldn’t have written this had he seen what happened just outside India’s Parliament on Monday: “Most autocrats still feel that they have to conform to the outward rituals of democracy even as they gut its substance.”

What’s more agonising is that the issue the joint opposition was agitated about was nothing less than gutting the substance of democracy. Could that be the reason why the rulers were not willing to allow even the outward rituals of democracy, manifested here in the form of a protest march? The Modi Government that has used brute force to stop the opposition parties from taking out a protest march on such simple issues like prices and jobs obviously cannot allow a movement to build up on the fundamental question of democracy.

Electoral sanctity is the soul of democracy

Electoral sanctity is the soul of democracy. By presenting evidence of voters’ list manipulation, Lok Sabha leader of opposition Rahul Gandhi showed a few days ago iron has entered the soul of democracy. If the opposition parties make “vote-theft” a political battlefield, the Government doubtless will be left with only two options: Admit its crime and rectify it; or unleash a war.

But the critical question here is this: What are the options before the opposition? Gandhi might have run a huge risk by hyping up this issue because he now doesn’t have the luxury of giving up without extracting a credible remedy. The Congress and other opposition parties have expressed deep suspicions about electronic voting machines (EVMs) in the past but never launched any structured movement against the malaise.

While the mistrust about EVMs is deathless, Gandhi has now unearthed massive anomalies in the electoral roll, having the potential of changing the outcome. In fact, it is wrong to call it an anomaly because the opposition leaders suspect a methodical heist designed in collaboration between the BJP and the ECI.

The reputation of both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the ECI now lie in tatters. No healthy democracy can live with this taint, that elections are manipulated here. These developments are reported the world over and are bound to create a crisis of credibility for India. The Prime Minister himself should have been extremely worried and talked to the nation about this critical issue, either promising a credible solution or rejecting the entire episode as bogus. India and the world needed clarity. His silence is disquieting and becomes a compelling factor to fuel suspicions.

The world has, after all, see how institutions were weakened and governments were stolen in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Arunachal Pradesh. Modi’s regime is not known for probity and integrity. But the perception that elections are stolen in India will finish us off as a democracy. Until corrective measures are taken to rectify voters list, introduce safeguards and reconstitute the Election Commission, electoral sanctity will be missing.

While the Prime Minister has chosen to remain silent, opposition leaders must realise this crescendo cannot be reached again and again. If this issue has been placed on the top of national priorities, it must be taken to logical conclusion. The option of giving up midway is not available. If legal remedies are not available, a mass movement on the pattern of the farmers’ agitation, should be planned.

The nation is stuck

This taint must be wiped off from the head of the ECI. Attempts to silence critics and political rivals by the Government because it defames India are counter-productive. Existence of thousands of fake voters in one assembly constituency is a reality. The ECI's refusal to provide machine –readable data and video footage does no good to its reputation.

The nation is stuck; it is crying for both short-term and long-term steps to restore the credibility of democracy in India. It is not a partisan task. It’s a national duty to restore the pride and majesty of Indian democracy.

“Vote-Chor Gaddi Chhor” slogans burn the ears. India has seen many ups and downs but democracy survived. We can’t afford to regress into a China or Russia model. Ideally, both the ruling parties and the opposition parties should have sat together to find a solution. But the chasm between them is too wide to be bridged. The antagonism is more than political. The easiest solution can come from the Supreme Court if it orders certain measures to stem the rot. But the problem is that the Supreme Court is largely seen as part of the problem today. The reason why India is in such an abysmal crisis is because the institutions have been hollowed out.

Doubts about elections are not new. BJP stalwart L K Advani formally registered his suspicions and a former BJP MP GVL Narasimha Rao wrote a book on the subject. While Gandhi said suspicions about results in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan troubled the Congress, the outcome in Haryana and Maharashtra confirmed that there was a burglary technique assiduously applied to alter the mandate. This compelled them to dive deeper into the electoral rolls and a pilot project on a Karnataka assembly constituency yielded empirical evidence of vote-theft technique.

The opposition parties have indeed woken up very late. The experiment proposed in a Maharashtra village – Makadwadi in Solapur district – would have exposed the game much earlier. The villagers suspected the BJP couldn’t have fetched so many votes and proposed a mock poll through ballot paper but the administration came down on them ruthlessly, disallowing any such experiment. Why should the state have a problem if the people of a village resort to a creative idea to reassure themselves?

Surprisingly, even the opposition parties came under pressure and cried off. Now that the Leader of Opposition has come up with disturbing evidence, the BJP and the Modi Government are desperately rejecting it as a Power-Point Presentation (PPP). But the evidence was culled from the official data provided by the Election Commission. Any attempt to discredit the findings appears bogus because the data was not manufactured by the Congress.

Whatever happened was tragic. The slate has to be wiped clean to begin afresh. Any decision to the contrary will destroy India’s image.

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