Is Democracy in India still being strangled by Money and Muscle?

By Shalini Gupta

91 Lok Sabha constituencies went to polls in the first phase of polling for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.  Included in this were all 7 constituencies of Delhi and all 10 constituencies of Haryana.  

Although polling was reported to be relatively peaceful in most areas there were several areas where irregularities were reported.  Reports that in the tribal area of Chattisgarh, where the well- known tribal activist Soni Sori is the AAP candidate, in a particular booth only Soni Sori and 2 other people were allowed to cast their vote. Whilst such a report may be less surprising from a tribal area of Chattisgarh, similar things happening in a widespread manner in the Gurgaon Constituency of Haryana, an area adjacent to metropolitan Delhi is surely shocking.   

In the Gurgaon constituency, reports are that there was widescale rigging in the whole region of Mewat. There were major irregularities reported by AAP booth agents alone in over 103 booths that made a mockery of free and fair elections.  In several rural areas of Mewat especially in Nuh, old style booth capturing allegedly took place. In several places, the polling agents were sent outside and the room was locked from inside to allow bogus voting to take place. Other instances of bogus voting took place where one person kept pressing the button and the Polling Booth agents and Presiding officer were intimidated.  In some places the Presiding officer was allegedly in collusion with the miscreants.  Incidents of people watching over the voting to intimidate the voters, and women not being allowed to vote independently were also reported.  AAP has collected the statements of its Booth agents who reported these irregularities and even obtained a sting audio recording of a BLO admitting in a taped conversation how the booth capturing happened and how votes in rural Mewat are decided by the powerful people in the area and Panchayats beforehand, and how physical force is used to influence elections.

A complaint was filed by the Aam Aadmi Party with the election commission with a request for re-polling in those areas and an investigation was ordered by the senior EC officials. A press conference was conducted by Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan in Gurgaon in the evening providing the details to the media with the audio recordings.  

Are the citizens of this country, the voters surprised by such open and blatant flouting of the norms of free and fair elections?  Are we shocked and outraged?  Or to some extent have we too accepted this as an unfortunate reality of elections in India?  Have we resigned ourselves to the fact that money and muscle will play an active part in elections and expecting anything different is too idealistic or foolish?

Let’s talk about money for a moment.  Although Election Commission has set an expenditure limit of 70 lakhs per candidate, it is clear that BJP has ripped that expense guideline to shreds with the amount of money they have pumped into these elections.  In Delhi alone, the number of large billboard they have plastered the city with, to the repeated radio and newspaper advertisements that have run, it is clear that they have spent massive amounts of money on their publicity campaign.  Word on the street is that they have spent several thousand crores on advertising.  All major newspapers in Delhi carried full front page advertisements and more on inside pages for Narendra Modi on the day of the election.  In addition to this being a violation of the Model Code of Conduct, when all campaigning is stopped in the last hours 48 before polling, one also wonders, who is providing these kinds of funds for this campaign? If it is large industrial houses, are they going to dictate the BJP agenda if they come into power?  Will Modi’s development be in the interests of these people who have funded his campaign or that of the common man, the Aam Aadmi?

Exercising your right to vote is a fundamental right in a democracy and when the right to choose your representative freely in your best interests in denied to some of our citizens, should we not all rise up and express outrage?  If we do not do so, is it because we have come to accept such irregularities as a way of life and have become immune to them?

Ever heard of the boiled frog syndrome?

It goes like this. If you out a frog in a pot of boiling water, it instinctively jumps out to safety. However, if you put a frog in a pot of water and slowly keep raising the temperature of the water, the frog keeps getting acclimatized and fails to recognize when the temperature has crossed the threshold of safety and perishes.  

Friends, if we do not rise up and express outrage at such blatant manipulation of free and fair elections, we are in danger of becoming boiled frogs.  Passive acceptance of such irregularities in the election process can be very dangerous for democracy in India.    

The author Shalini Gupta is the Organization Development Advisor of the Aam Aadmi Party and is the coordinator of the AAP Global NRI supporter group.