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New Delhi: Tuesday, April 23, was the largest day of voting: 117 constituencies, from Kashmir to Kerala, from Guwahati to Gandhinagar, went to the polls, putting India’s 17th general elections well past the halfway mark.

As documented by Gilles Vernier of Ashoka University, the 1,612 candidates included

• 25 PhDs and 18 who are not literate;
• Only 139 women, and one transgender candidate (AAP’s Chirpi Bhawani);
• 12 auto-drivers, three actors, one ‘dependent on father’, a poet, a bhajan singer and a Zomato supplier.

The candidates also included Prime Minister Narendra Modi (not counted as an actor), his rival Rahul Gandhi (not counted as ‘dependent on father’), Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah, Nationalist Congress Party’s Supriya Sule, and Congress parliamentary mascots Shashi Tharoor and Mallikarjun Kharge.

The peak of our “festival of democracy” was only marred by a hue and cry, raised in various points in the country, about Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) malfunctioning.

By 10 am, faulty EVMs had already interrupted voting in parts of Kerala, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh. Protests began over some machines allegedly delivering false votes to the BJP. In Assam, the complainants included former Director General of Police and writer Harekrishna Deka.

Both Shashi Tharoor in Thiruvananthapuram and Akhilesh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh tweeted and gave press conferences on Tuesday, expressing frustration or grave doubts (respectively) about the machines.

In Wayanad, selected by Rahul Gandhi as his back-up ticket, his opponent – BJP ally Thushar Vellappally – countered by reporting EVM glitches and demanding a repeat poll there, NDTV reported.

In multiple constituencies, electoral officers investigated and rejected the allegations.

Also read | EVM Malfunction: Does Criminalisation Deter Genuine Complaints?

Unlike the voting machines that allegedly fired to benefit the BJP, the ECI continued to be able to fire at anyone except the prime minister.

Narendra Modi was back in the Gujarat capital to vote. Apart from a private moment with his mother and a few TV cameras, Modi also made time to drive extremely slowly from his voting booth – essentially turning the trip into a campaign road-show on voting day, (another) major violation the Model Code of Conduct.

The speed of his convoy allowed his security detail to walk alongside the open-topped vehicle, but the prime minister – who never saw a loophole he wouldn’t exploit – remained seated.

Afterward, Congress leaders claim he gave a public speech, touching on themes both religious (voting is like “a pure dip in the the Kumbh”) and military (a voting ID “is much, much more powerful than an IED”).

The Congress’s Abhishek Manu Singhvi asked the ECI, once again, to take action and bar the prime minister from campaigning for 48 to 72 hours (which may be the longest Modi has gone without campaigning in the past five years).

The ECI has taken similar action against leaders from all parties, but has declined to act against the prime minister, despite serial and open transgressions.

Bombs from heaven

Despite the ECI’s appeals, the Balakote airstrikes remained a central theme for BJP leaders on the stump. At a rally in Virar, Maharasthra chief minister Devendra Phadnavis said, about opposition leaders, “we would have strapped one of them to the rockets sent to Balakot, to see it with their own eyes.”

(In Kashmir’s Anantnag, fearing actual bombings and militant reprisals, the first phase of voting had a depressing turnout of less than 5%.

Meanwhile, in Murshidabad in West Bengal, actual bombs went off, killing a man and injuring three others.)

Until Tuesday, the BJP had relied on winning votes based on its border policy; now it also has a Border policy, as movie-star Sunny Deol – the only man who might actually strap himself to a bomb to be dropped on Pakistan – officially joined the party.

He was only one in a parade of celebrities whom the ruling party wants to send to Parliament. Tuesday’s new nominees included former cricketer Gautam Gambhir, from East Delhi, and folk singer Hans Raj Hans, from North-West Delhi. Gambhir will go to bat against Atishi, the Aam Aadmi Party’s star candidate and advocate for better government schools.

Also read | As Polls Loom, AAP Puts Faith in Schools Over Temples

But the spotlight remained with the BJP’s main celebrity candidate, the terror-accused Pragya Singh Thakur, whose role in the Malegaon bomb blast is still being tried.

On Tuesday, BJP ally Shiv Sena condemned Thakur’s statement– calling her investigating officer, Hemant Karkare, an anti-national and saying that she cursed him to die – “despicable and an insult to all martyrs of the nation.”

A plea to bar Thakur from contesting – made by the father of a victim of the Malegaon bombing – put her back under the radar of the National Investigation Agency (NIA). On Tuesday, however, the NIA deferred the decision to the ECI.

At the end of the day, the only candidate actually facing any censure was Rahul Gandhi, who had incorrectly attributed the phrase  ‘Chowkidar Chor Hai’ to the Supreme Court. Following a petition by BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi, the court issued fresh notice to Gandhi on that faux pas.

Another board, a special court for MPs, will hold a hearing on Rahul’s “seditious” remark about the prime minister “hiding behind the blood of soldiers”. In this case, the claim may be only too accurate.

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