'Are elections still fair in India, or are we all witness to a macabre style of 'selection' of lawmakers?'
'The jury will be out on this for a long time because there is no definitive evidence on either contention, at least as yet,' notes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author, Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times.
The shock, awe and exultation in the victor's camp alongside stunned moroseness in the quarters of those vanquished in Bihar's electoral battle must give way, at least within the world of non-party troopers, to a foreboding pair of thoughts.
Firstly, it must be examined how the entire lot of media persons and pollsters missed reading the writing on the wall: That this would be the most one-sided assembly elections in Bihar since 2010.
Back then, the Bharatiya Janata Party and Janata Dal-United were the only two constitutents of the National Democratic Alliance and they won 206 of the 243 seats with a strike rate of 89.21% and 81.56% respectively (as against the strike rate of 88.12% and 84.16% in the just concluded election).
Secondly, and this query-like deliberation arises from the first doubt within the mind. Has the electoral system already been subverted to a deeper and more sinister extent -- much beyond what has already happened over nearly a decade?
Much has been stated regarding election commissioners looking the other way when the Model Code of Conduct is violated by the chieftain and other leaders of the ruling party.
The election commissioners have also been observed to be often responding to direct hints from the powers that be, regarding when precisely they wanted polls to be called, and much more. So has the ECI now stooped even lower?
It is not that all election commissioners in the past were paragons of neutrality -- there were several who lived up to their Constitutional mandate, but since 2014, each election commissioner (especially the chief election commissioners) has tried to outdo the other when it came to servility to the current regime.
These two aforesaid thoughts feed into each other. As far as the first goes, the entire lot of media persons, including those co-opted by the regime and others who remain steadfast critics, were unanimous in their view that this was a tough election to call and that the verdict would go down to the wire.
Assembly elections were being held less than eighteen months after last year's Lok Sabha polls in which the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Development Alliance won more than 75% of the seats, bagging 31 of the 40 seats in the state.
Despite this, the assembly elections were expected by the entire media brigade to be a tougher round for the NDA.
Such a conclusion was primarily due to people's response to the Vote Chori campaign led by Rahul Gandhi against the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls.
Besides this, the SIR process led to hardships and several unscheduled visits home had to be made by the migrant labour to make these visits to ensure their continued presence on the rolls. Besides the costs involved in these trips, in most instances, these people were daily wage workers without salary protection for 'leave'.
Media persons reasoned that these hardships besides other issues to the day-to-day concerns of the people would add to the NDA's troubles in the campaign and make this a much-closer campaign than what was seen during the parliamentary polls in 2024.
The powerful word that catapulted Prime Minister Narendra Modi to office in 2014 -- 'badlao' or change, was being heard in Bihar too, it was stated in these reports.
It is not that media persons failed to read what was in the minds of people for the first time.
Quite often in the past, journalists erred by believing what they wanted the verdict to be. Another way of saying this will be that they saw what they wanted to be.
But maybe, and this remains a lingering worry, may be they did not perceive the situation wrongly.
Instead, something inexplicable took place between their reports and the day results were declared.
The credibility of pollsters is currently even lower than the media in the public eye.
Not only are methodologies and sample size not disclosed, but the timing of the start of exit polls -- almost immediately after polling is over -- also does not allow for the survey to drawn to a close several hours before the last of the voters have cast their lot.
Additionally, in recent years the word has got around that pollsters who declare the ruling party as trailing would jeopardise prospective contracts in future.
Additionally, little is known about the background of most polling agencies which conduct these exit polls.
This time too, I did a very basic check of the agencies that were credited for these polls on various television channels, and barring one or two agencies, none had a credible track record. At least one did not even have presence on the Internet.
Even the three agencies which released their figures a day after polling gave a comfortable majority to the NDA, but barring one agency, the others did not even speak about victory with a two-third majority.
This lone agency too, did not state that the victory would be a runaway one, with the total tally of all allies going beyond 200.
The bigger worry however, is over allegations that the entire SIR process was conceptualised for preparing made-to-order electoral rolls in every state and the voters' lists are mostly positively inclined towards the BJP and its chosen allies in select states.
While the information on this is still insufficient as conclusive evidence is not yet forthcoming, there is no denying that the entire SIR process puts the onus on getting 'listed' on the rolls on the voter and not the Commission.
Quite clearly the ECI under this present set of commissioners has abdicated its responsibility as the principal body entrusted to enrol citizens of the country as voters.
Fears about the entire process being aimed at disenfranchising large sections of the citizenry, further gathered momentum when the ECI kick-started the process of SIR in several other states even before the polls in Bihar were completed.
Speaking from personal experience (I am a voter in Uttar Pradesh where SIR is now underway), the entire online process is totally user-unfriendly, especially if any discrepancies are noted in personal details that did not catch the eye previously.
The burden increases if an applicant did not have her/his name in the list that was finalised after the previous SIR was undertaken (in UP the previous exercise was undertaken in 2003).
Interaction with a few officials -- after finally getting through to them after steering past an arduous process that is more vexing than the pre-call centre help lines of the Indian Railways -- makes it clear that these junior-level harassed officials assigned this vital task have no idea about India's primitiveness in data usage 22 years ago (the Bihar SIR too was conducted in 2003) when the process of getting enrolled in electoral rolls was a manual process.
The so-called second phase of SIR is being carried out in 9 states and 3 UTs.
The process is being carried out on a short deadline of one month (the Press Information Bureau in its handout of the SIR process roll-out emphasised on the fact that the process will 'continue for a full month').
The ECI expects voters, including migrant workers to make their way home and stay several days there without pay to submit the forms after going through the variety of 'helping hands'.
Most importantly, the SIR is being carried out in states that go to the polls next year (Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal and Puducherry) along with 6 other states and 2 UTs even as fresh media reports and disclosures about the deletions in Bihar by Opposition parties are still coming out.
The urgency with which SIR is being carried out in this phase suggests that the ECI and the government are unwilling to follow a consensual approach.
The fears are thus natural that India is heading towards being a democracy just in name.
The subversion of the electoral process, from which impartiality has been sucked out several years ago, will push India further down on the indices of democracy that are prepared under due processes by respectable institutions -- but trashed by the government -- like V-Dem, Freedom House and the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Several journalists interviewed BJP veteran L K Advani in 2015, when the 40th anniversary of imposition of the Emergency was being marked by a series of articles and special interviews.
He was asked by many if the Emergency could be imposed again. He said he did not have the confidence that such a process shall not happen again.
Over the past several years, especially after 2019, it has been argued that India was undergoing a virtual state of Emergency.
While this may be contested by those supporting the government, they cannot deny that its leaders now pay greater emphasis on citizens fulfilling their 'duties' and not asking for their rights enshrined in the Constitution. In 2018, India transited to being an 'electoral autocracy' according to V-Dem.
Are elections still fair in India, or are we all witness to a macabre style of 'selection' of lawmakers? The jury will be out on this for a long time because there is no definitive evidence on either contention, at least as yet.
Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay's latest book is The Demolition, The Verdict and The Temple: The Definitive Book on the Ram Mandir Project.
Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff
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