The people of Surat will not vote in this election. May 7 is listed as the polling date, but the city has already got its MP. Bharatiya Janata Party’s Mukesh Dalal was elected unopposed on April 22, the first winner of 2024, declared six weeks before counting day.
The Congress had fielded Nilesh Kumbhani from the seat. On Sunday, his nomination papers were rejected over “discrepancies in verification of signatures of three proposers”. The proposers had sent affidavits to polling officials saying the signatures were not theirs.
As cover for such a situation where a nomination form is rejected, political parties field back-up nominees who withdraw from the contest once the official candidate’s papers go through. Suresh Padsala was the substitute for Kumbhani. Curiously, his proposer similarly denied signing the papers and Padsala’s form too was rejected.
On Monday, nine candidates remained in the fray, including Dalal.
Eight withdrew their nomination papers during the course of the day. Among them was the Bahujan Samaj Party’s Pyarelal Bharti, some Independents and representatives of small parties.
The BJP scored its first victory, with Dalal being handed the certificate of election. The party’s Gujarat chief said they had gifted a lotus to Narendra Modi and promised to deliver 25 more. The state has 26 Lok Sabha seats.
Kumbhani is incommunicado and his wife Neeta has denied reports that he is joining the BJP. Speaking to Aaj Tak, Neeta Kumbhani has alleged that the proposers, not her husband, were hand in glove with the BJP.
Newslaundry has reported that the stamp papers for the four affidavits of the proposers were bought at the same time, and the documents were notarised by a BJP leader who is also a lawyer. It says the affidavits were ready even before the BJP candidate approached the polling officials asking that the signatures on Kumbhani’s forms be scrutinised.
The Congress has cried foul. General secretary Jairam Ramesh tweeted: “The distress and anger faced by MSME owners and businesspeople in Modi’s Anyay Kaal has spooked the BJP so badly that they are attempting to ‘match-fix’ Surat Lok Sabha, which they have won consistently since 1984 Lok Sabha elections!”
Democracy is under threat. Aap chronology samajhiye:
• Surat District Election Officer rejects @INCIndia’s candidate for Surat Lok Sabha, Nilesh Kumbhani’s nomination for “discrepancies in verification of signatures of three proposers”
• On similar grounds, officials reject… https://t.co/uEnLeCGOG7
— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) April 22, 2024
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Also read: No Election in Surat: Is This ‘Operation Black Lotus’ Even Before the Candidate Is Elected?
You could say the Congress is itself to blame since it made a poor choice of candidate and got conned, a valid criticism. You could wonder if Pyarelal Bharti fooled his party or whether the BSP was hand in glove with the BJP.
The biggest loser though is not any political party. We don’t know whether Kumbhani would have won had he contested. In the last two elections, the BJP had received almost 75% of the total votes cast in the constituency. Ramesh might claim that the small and medium businessmen are unhappy with the BJP, but that is an untested claim. Surat might well have chosen Dalal.
We will never know. The people of Gujarat’s second largest city did not get a chance to choose. The Congress party has lost face and the INDIA alliance a seat it could have tried to win, but the over 16 lakh voters of Surat have been robbed of something more fundamental – their democratic right to choose their representative in Parliament.
The Congress or INDIA voters would be angry and upset. But would even Surat’s BJP supporters be happy, given that the certificate of election to Dalal has told them they are irrelevant? The party they support doesn’t need their support. They can watch this festival of democracy, not participate in it.
Why elections are ceasing to matter
Over the past few years, we have seen the people’s mandate being repeatedly overturned as elected governments have been toppled. Earlier this year, we saw the polling official stealing the Chandigarh mayoral election for the BJP by defacing and invalidating some of the votes cast for the rival candidate. Now, in Surat, even the votes will not be cast. Elections are ceasing to matter, step by step.
If anyone thought the INDIA parties are fear-mongering when they say the 2024 election will be the country’s last unless the BJP is defeated, the walkover to Dalal should be an eye-opener. Today it is Surat’s voters who have been benched, tomorrow it could be the rest of India. As an Opposition leader warned: “Surat toh bas jhaanki hai, poora desh abhi baki hai.”
Not for nothing did Sharad Pawar this week remind voters about Vladimir Putin. When Putin first became president in 1999, Russia’s constitution limited the president to two consecutive terms. So, after Putin’s second term ended in 2008, he served as prime minister before becoming president again in 2012. In 2020, he amended the constitution to allow himself to remain in office for two more terms.
Elections are held in Russia, but Putin’s victory each time is a foregone conclusion. Most Opposition leaders have been jailed, exiled or barred from contesting or are dead. In the latest election results, announced in March, Putin got over 87% of the total votes cast. Alexei Navalny, his most strident critic, died in a Russian jail in mysterious circumstances in February.
If Putin has effectively declared himself president for life, Narendra Modi is selling dreams for 2047 – by when he will be in his nineties.
Other ominous signs of an autocracy have been there for a while.
Modi ki Guarantee, Aayega toh Modi hi, Phir ek baar Modi sarkar, Modi ka parivaar…. The BJP does not seem to have a single slogan that doesn’t centre around one person. Even its manifesto is titled “Modi ki Guarantee” and the headline to every section in the document begins with “Modi ki Guarantee for….” His supporters identify themselves as bhakts.
Does such worship of one individual have place in a democracy – a system of government where people are supreme?
After a comment he made this month about INDIA leaders eating fish threatened to backfire, the prime minister said the laws of this country do not stop anyone from eating what they like, nor does Modi. “Nor does Modi.” The question we could ask is: How can Modi stop anyone from eating anything if Indian laws do not stop them? He is the prime minister, not an emperor whose word would be the law.
Also read: Fish, Mutton Campaign for Modi, Only to Duck Mention of His 10-Year Record?
The Election Commission though seems to think his words are above the law. Three days after Modi delivered a speech so outrageous that even his website has not reproduced the text in full in English, the institution responsible for ensuring free and fair elections is mute.
On Monday, at Banswara in Rajasthan, the prime minister said: “When they (the Congress) were in power, they said Muslims had the first claim on the state’s resources. This means they will collect the wealth and give it to those who have more children. They will give it to the ghuspethiyon (infiltrators). Do you want to give away your hard-earned money to the intruders? Will you accept this? This is what the Congress manifesto says — the gold owned by our mothers and sister will be assessed, collected and distributed. They will distribute this wealth among those whom the Manmohan Singh government had said… that Muslims had the first right to the wealth…. My mothers and sisters, they will not even spare your mangalsutra.”
The country’s prime minister was using the words “those with more children” and “intruders” interchangeably with “Muslims” and he was telling the married Hindu women in his audience that their “mangalsutra” would not be safe if the Congress came to power, that it would be snatched from them and given to Muslims.
The first paragraph in the Election Commission’s Model Code of Conduct bars any activity that can create or aggravate hate or tension between different communities.
The prime minister also lied. The Congress manifesto does not talk about taking away the wealth or the gold or mangalsutras of citizens.
What the party has said is this: OBC, SC and ST communities form 70% of India’s population but are poorly represented in high-ranking professions, services and businesses, a historical inequity that needs to be addressed. The manifesto promises to conduct a socio-economic and caste census and use the data gathered for affirmative action in education and employment. It is in this context that the party earlier came out with the slogan Jitni Aabadi Utna Haq (Representation in proportion to population).
This slogan of social justice was twisted beyond recognition in Modi’s Banswara speech.
The Congress manifesto does make promises to the minorities, the sum total of which is that the rights given to them by the constitution will be protected, and the government will help them access their fair share of the fruits of progress. Some promises:
- Respect and uphold the fundamental right to practise one’s faith and the rights guaranteed to religious minorities under Articles 15, 16, 25, 26, 28, 29 and 30 of the Constitution;
- Respect and uphold the rights of linguistic minorities guaranteed under Articles 15, 16, 29 and 30 of the constitution;
- Ensure that the minorities receive their fair share of opportunities in education, healthcare, public employment, public works contracts, skill development, sports and cultural activities without discrimination;
- Ensure that banks provide institutional credit to minorities without discrimination.
These are the promises that any government should make.
The oath that a prime minister takes, which Modi has taken twice and to which he is at present bound, includes these words: “…I will do right to all manner of people in accordance with the constitution and the law, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will.”
As for Manmohan Singh allegedly saying Muslims have the first right on resources, this allegation was called out as “a deliberate and mischievous misinterpretation” by the then Prime Minister’s Office the first time it was made in 2006. The PMO had put out the full text of Singh’s speech at the time.
But the lies should not surprise.
Last month, the prime minister spoke of how he would trick co-passengers to secure a seat in crowded trains in his younger days. At the National Creators Award ceremony, a video of which is posted on Narendra Modi’s YouTube channel, he said everyone wants to get their palms read and then recounted his experience of frequently travelling by packed, unreserved coaches. “What I would do was spy my chance, and then take anybody’s palm and start looking at it. Immediately, people would arrange a seat for me. ‘Come, come, sit down, they would say’,” Modi said, laughing at the memory.
That was only a train seat. The battle now is for the seat of power.
The ruse then was palmistry. Now it is Musalman and mangalsutra and Ram Mandir and Hanuman Chalisa.
Surat has been cheated. A constituency that voted for the BJP for 35 years has been denied its right to vote. But the rest of India still has a chance to choose wisely. The writing from Gujarat is on the wall: this is our last chance to save our vote.
