Alarm Bells From Chandigarh | Vazhipokkan
The Indian Republic would have been forced to hang her head in shame had BJP won the Chandigarh mayoral election. BJP is not the first Indian political party that has deviated from the path of morality. AS writer Mukul Kesavan points out, what makes BJP unique is its capability in organising this journey with more precision and accuracy: ''The BJP does all this more systematically than the others. This is important. The BJP uses the sinews of the State not just more effectively than, say, the Congress; it uses them more systematically. For instance, unlike other political parties that milked donors for unaccounted money for politicking, the BJP created a system of electoral bonds that made collecting these money both legitimate and anonymous.''
What BJP did in the Chandigarh mayoral election was a major move in this process of institutionalising immorality! The Chandigarh municipal corporation has 35 councillors. The Chandigarh MP is also entitled to vote in the mayoral election. That makes the total number of votes in the mayoral election 36. Kirron Kher of BJP is the present MP of Chandigarh. When the election took place on January 30, BJP had 14 councillors, AAP had 13, Congress - 7 and Akali Dal -1. As expected the AAP- Congress candidate Kuldeep Kumar garnered 20 votes while 16 votes went to the BJP candidate Manoj Sonkar. But the election results announced by Anil Masih, the returning officer, astonished everyone who believed in democracy. The returning officer declared 8 votes that were polled in favour of Kuldeep Kumar, invalid and pronounced the BJP candidate Manoj Sonkar the winner.
In normal conditions, no person would have done what Anil Masih did to undermine the democratic process. He was sitting in front of the CCTV cameras. Every movement was being recorded visually. Still, Anil Masih went on to commit the fraud. What would have emboldened Anil to commit such a crime ? He might have been under the impression that he would be able to get off scot-free provided the BJP extended its wholehearted support. He might have recalled the way Pragya Takur, who praised Godse, was rewarded by the BJP, with a Lok Sabha seat in 2019. He might have been overwhelmed by the fact that Ramesh Bidhuri, the BJP MP, who abused Danish Ali on the floor of the Parliament, was assigned by the saffron party to monitor its election campaign in Rajasthan's Tonk district.
Chandigarh is a union territory. The Punjab governor happens to be its administrator, who selects the returning officer for the mayoral election. This simply means that Anil Masih, a hard core member of the BJP, was appointed as the returning officer with a game plan. It was crystal clear that BJP could never win the mayoral election. What really upset the BJP was the alliance formed between the AAP and the Congress. BJP realised that the alliance of AAP and Congress could have far reaching consequences in the upcoming Lok Sabha election. So, the alliance had to be nipped in the bud. Chandigarh can never be given away to the I.N.D.I.A formation. The opposition shouldn't be allowed to win even a mayoral election.
It was not surprising that neither the PM, who never fails to showcase the 'Mother of Democracy' nor his colleagues, found anything wrong in what Anil Masih did. The BJP leadership celebrated the victory as a fitting response to the opposition. PM Modi rose to the occasion and maintained a studied silence, which appeared to carry the mark of his 'guarantee' to the game plan. Modi was reminded of the 'Raj Dharma' in 2002 by the then PM Vajpayee in the wake of the Gujarat riots. Vajpayee was a leader, who saw to it that the portrait of Nehru, the first PM of independent India, remained at the same place in the parliament when the Congress govt was replaced by the Janata regime in 1977. It is a sad reality that BJP has travelled much back from those times.
The sustenance and solace provided by the SC verdict in the electoral bond case was indeed great. BJP has collected Rs 6,566 crore via electoral bonds. No other political party comes anywhere near the ruling party in terms of the collection from the electoral bonds. Democracy demands a level playing field for all the stakeholders. It is this fundamental premise that BJP has undermined through the electoral bonds, which the SC termed illegal. There is no limit to what BJP can do when the party has this much white money. In fact, the SC verdict came really late. Had the verdict been delivered earlier, the BJP would not have received so much money from the electoral bonds. It remains to be seen if the illegal money that the political parties have amassed via the electoral bonds will be retrieved without much delay.
It was everybody's guess that the BJP was well prepared to outsmart the SC in Chandigarh. The party ensured that three Councillors of AAP switched over to its camp on the eve of the SC's verdict. That raised the BJP's strength to 17. With the vote of the Chandigarh MP, the party was assured of the required majority in the council to get its candidate elected if the SC cancelled the election and went for a fresh one. But, the SC was a step ahead of the BJP. The apex court didn't cancel the election considering the potential for horse trade and declared the AAP- Congress candidate the winner. This was a real setback to the machiavellian moves by the BJP. The SC made the intervention at the right time to prevent the BJP from murdering the Indian democracy.
Indian democracy can't afford to miss the message that emanates from Chandigarh. If BJP could go to this extent to rig a mayoral election it makes one shudder to think of the level BJP could stoop to emerge victorious in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. It is in this context that technical experts point out the urgent need to ensure that the voting machines are tamper-proof. There should be a mechanism to see to it that the voter receives a print out of the vote and the same should be counted along with the votes to rule out the possibility of any mismatches.
It is a proven fact that BJP has no qualms in undermining the democratically elected govts in various states. BJP has excelled in this in Karnataka, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. One must remember the words of K Surendran, BJP Kerala state president, that the party can come into power in Kerala if it got 35 seats out of 140.
BJP calls itself 'the party with a difference.' It treats all other parties as pseudo secularists while it claims to be the torch bearer of genuine secularism. 'Sabka saat, sabka vikas', corruption free India have been the main mottos. Human beings are prone to mistakes. Quite often one may not be able to walk the talk. But, every society progresses only when it tries its best to deliver what it promises. Mahatma Gandhi's life was a classic example of this. He named his autobiography 'My Experiments With truth.' His entire life was a struggle to get at truth. No one is infallible, no one has the monopoly of truth. But, Gandhi believed that one must always strive for it. The immense moral courage that he possessed was his capital in this fight. He could never make any compromise with politics without morality. He was ever ready to question the immoral laws implemented by the regime. Civil dis-obedience was his greatest tool in the fight against colonial forces. He was never frightened by the immoral forces even if the sun never set on their empire.
It would be really wise to read once again the article penned by Subramanian Swamy in the Frontline dated January22, 2,000. Swamy delves deep into the political agenda of the Parivar in this prophetic article, which is titled 'The RSS Gameplan'. According to Swamy, discrediting the RSS' opponents, shattering the public's confidence in every institution and subverting the electoral system are the major components of this game plan. Swamy concludes his article thus: ''Of course, the good news is that the game plan can fail. I live on the hope that in India, no well-laid plan ever works. India, after all, is a functioning anarchy. That has been the undoing of every attempt to straitjacket its society. That is why we are still the longest continuing unbroken civilisation of over 10,000 years. The RSS is, luckily, our counter-culture.''
Swamy wrote this essay when he was not part of the BJP. It is the very counter culture, that Swamy pinpointed, has come out in the open in Chandigarh. India has undergone some drastic changes in the last 10 years. The present regime is capable of turning the counter culture into the culture of India. That is why Indian democracy demands a new grammar and new text to resist the reactionary forces. It is indeed heartening to see that the SC is rising to the occasion at this critical juncture when the Indian republic is waging the most crucial battle for democracy in recent times.