Poll body must remain responsive with its eyes and ears attentive to machinations of political parties in or out of power
Prasad Nallapati, December 15, 2023
Elections to Parliament and some State Assemblies are due in 3-4 months. Allegations of electoral malpractices are a common gripe in the runup to the ballot.
The extent of such frauds influencing voters’ choice is a matter of conjecture as there are no concrete studies to assess their impact. All political parties are equally culpable though those in power always have an edge over others.
The aim of this paper is to present an overview of such malpractices that may have influenced the outcome of elections to some degree, using an example of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh (AP).
2019 ELECTION
Election to AP Assembly was last held in the year 2019 when the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) led by Jagan Mohan Reddy has stormed to power defeating the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) of Chandra Babu Naidu (CBN) by a wide margin of 151 to 23 seats.
To Jagan Reddy’s credit, it must be said he ran a powerful campaign promising social justice to backward classes and weaker sections.
In contrast, the TDP’s campaign had paled with its vain effort of glorifying unaccomplished projects and promises.
So much so, from the outset, the YSRCP seemed to have had a fair chance of winning the election.
However, that did not stop Jagan Reddy and his powerful political allies to make use of every possible tool in the kit to crush the TDP. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the then Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao extended unstinted support to YSRCP, going by reports of the day.
Governor, an appointee of the Central Government, allegedly played a key role behind the scenes.
The TDP was choked off all sources of funding with a series of measures like income tax raids on its leaders and sympathizers, and sealing of the AP’s borders with neighbouring states, while funds flowed freely to its adversary.
The Election Commission was also accused of partisan conduct as the Poll Body was said to have acted immediately on YSRCP complaints while sitting over that of the others.
In what was no more than high stakes play, the Chief Secretary was changed, along with DG (Intelligence).
While the EC has powers to do so, the way it was carried out had put the Poll Body in the cross hairs of transparency champions.
The ifs and buts notwithstanding, the EC did not cover itself with glory with widespread malfunctioning of electronic voting machines (EVMs). Many commentators said that it was the first time they saw such a scale of malfunctioning with some analysts seeing EC’s complicity in the phenomenon.
While CBN alleged of 30 per cent of machines malfunctioning, the Sate Chief Election officer (CEO), cited 370 instances of EVM failure.
OLD GAME -WEAR OUT VOTERS
Significantly, the Sate Chief Election officer himself was hit by EVM blues. He could not vote in his first visit and had to revisit the booth in the evening to exercise his franchise.
This was also a first in the electoral history of India, according to observers.
Like the CEO, many voters, particularly senior citizens and women, returned home after waiting for long hours but did not venture back to the booth late in the evening.
This is a strategy, it is said, that wears out and deters many genuine and serious voters from exercising their franchise.
Even contesting candidates from the TDP and their agents left booths as they did not see the machines being rectified soon. The TDP’s booth cadres appeared to be completely paralyzed.
Strangely enough, the machines started working quite late in the day, and voting was allowed late into the night, even up to midnight in some places as a large number of people turned up to vote.
Voting percentage thus peaked to 80 per cent, which is an increase of nearly two per cent over the 2014 elections.
With no TDP agents around and valid voters unwilling to return, it is anybody’s guess who had really utilized those ballots. Cash and alcohol flowed freely, as the dailies put out next morning.
Widespread violence on the polling day also kept many valid voters away from polling booths.
Both sides indulged in violence, but casualties appear to be more on the TDP side. One of its ministers was killed at a polling booth, while the then Assembly Speaker was brutally assaulted.
YSRCP BATTLLE READY
Now that the YSRCP in the drivers’ seat, Chief Minister Jagan Reddy is not sparing any effort to `decapitate’ the TDP leadership to weaken it to be a major challenge at the battle of the ballot.
The police have shed all pretensions of a neutral professional force. And, going by the way they are conducting around, the police appear to have been reduced to be the ruling party’s militia which was let loose to hound the Opposition leaders.
A plethora of “unsubstantiated” criminal cases are slapped to shut them in prisons with the elections round the corner.
A force of volunteers, recruited ostensibly to deliver government schemes at the village level, are alleged to be reduced to a party campaigning machinery.
Since many of these volunteers are part of the Village Secretariats, they are fears that they could be used as polling officers to help the ruling party win the election.
A common apprehension is heard these days. It is that an exercise of weeding out the opposition sympathizers from voters list is in full swing with these volunteers playing a major role.
This apprehension is compounded by ground reports that names of many voters have gone missing on anonymous complaints to the Election Commission, while hundreds of new ones are added, often with same address, with no verification.
As the countdown for the ballot has been sounded, Nirvachan Sadan must step in to properly update the voters’ lists. Otherwise, the poll body will come under cloud once again.
CONCLUSION
It is generally believed that such malpractices help increase voting margins and get a few wins where margins are quite close, but never upset the entire process to give the election on a platter to a side against popular mandate.
Nevertheless, Election Commission and the poll-bound official machinery must sniff out these malpractices. At the same time, the Poll body must remain responsive with its eyes and ears attentive to machinations of political parties in or out of power.
On their part, political parties whether in Andhra Pradesh or other states will better serve their interests and of democracy if they strengthen their presence at the booth level with a broad-based permanent network to prevent pre-poll malpractices. ####
(Prasad Nallapati is a former Additional Secretary to Govt of India and President of the Hyderabad-based think tank, Deccan Council for Strategic Initiatives)
