The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is launching a counter offensive against the Opposition’s allegations that elections in the country were being rigged and the insinuation that the election commission (EC) was not functioning as an independent body. It does not want the issue to set off protests and campaigns like it happened preceding the recall of the farm laws, against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), and more recently, over exam paper leaks, said people aware of the details.
Opposition parties, particularly the Congress and the Trinamool Congress, have accused the poll panel of irregularities and working in collusion with the ruling BJP. The allegations come in the wake of media reports that there was no consensus within the poll panel on several issues including the Special Intensive Revision (SIR). These allegations have been vehemently denied by both the poll panel as well as the ruling party.
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Several BJP leaders who spoke to HT said while a section within the party fears that the narrative could have a wider resonance on the ground, others feel that the attempt to discredit the poll panel, with the mandate to conduct assembly and general elections, will have no adverse impact on the BJP’s electoral fortunes as was reflected after the Bihar state polls last year.
The issue was raised by the opposition in the state, but the BJP-JDU combine swept the polls winning 174 of the 243 seats and the opposition had just 35. “Rahul Gandhi and Tejasvi Yadav (of the Rashtriya Janata Dal) undertook a 1,300 km yatra across 25 districts and alleged that 6.5 million voters were impacted by the SIR…We saw how the Congress and the RJD were routed in the polls. Had the allegations been true, people would have come out in protest,” said a senior BJP leader who was part of the Bihar campaign.
{{/usCountry}}The issue was raised by the opposition in the state, but the BJP-JDU combine swept the polls winning 174 of the 243 seats and the opposition had just 35. “Rahul Gandhi and Tejasvi Yadav (of the Rashtriya Janata Dal) undertook a 1,300 km yatra across 25 districts and alleged that 6.5 million voters were impacted by the SIR…We saw how the Congress and the RJD were routed in the polls. Had the allegations been true, people would have come out in protest,” said a senior BJP leader who was part of the Bihar campaign.
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But the party is not taking chances, particularly since it does not want people taking to the streets as they did during the year-long protest in 2020 over the three farm laws; the sit-in over CAA that went on for over three months and the recent students’ protest led by the Cockroach Janata Party over paper leaks that led to the resignation of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan. “Issues such as caste, amenities, social welfare schemes and the leader are key poll planks. But there are certain issues that have wider ramification and more resonance on the ground as they are not limited to a certain section or class such as education, employment and now the burden of having to prove identity. It is therefore important that we address this concern before it becomes a fake narrative with a strong hold,” said a second party leader. The second leader said the BJP has ramped up its outreach to counter the claims that elections were rigged and that large scale deletion of voters took place.
The BJP has been asserting that the SIR is the most effective and legal framework to identify and weed out illegal voters and clear the electoral roles of discrepancies.
To buttress the claim, BJP MP Sambit Patra said the TMC won in 13 of the 20 assembly constituencies that saw the highest number of voter deletions while the Congress won 1 seat, and the BJP won 6 seats.
“In Shamsherganj, 74,775 votes were deleted and the TMC won; in Lalgola, 55,420 votes were deleted and the TMC won; in Bhagawangola, 47,493 votes were deleted and the TMC won… The TMC and the Congress were the parties winning most of the seats where the highest number of votes had been deleted,” Patra said.
After Congress lawmaker Rahul Gandhi cast aspersions on the polling process and questioned why the BJP unlike other governments seems to be unaffected by anti-incumbency, the party hit back saying that the sentiment on the ground was against the grand old party and not Prime Minister Narendra Modi led BJP.
Party spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi said, “Gandhi has presented ‘anti-incumbency’ as an established truth in the country, and that too after the BJP came to power. Politically devoid of wisdom and knowledge, he does not understand that the truth is that anti-incumbency has remained highly consistent and strong against the Congress.”
And it is not only the opposition. The BJP is concerned by the response of some of its allies such as the Lok Jan Shakti Party that wants the EC to clear the air.
“About 13 crore families are affected, which means the problem is expansive and affected roughly one third of the population…unlike the farm laws that affected only a smaller section, paper leaks and SIR have an impact on a larger set of people and the BJP’s defence of the EC will not cut ice,” said a third party leader.