WITH the promised ‘hydrogen bomb’ put off for another day, senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s stepped-up ‘vote chori’ line of attack against the BJP Thursday left at least some in the party uneasy about the fallout.
At a much-anticipated press conference held in Delhi, the Leader of the Opposition alleged illegal deletion of votes at an Assembly constituency in Karnataka and “additions” at a seat in Maharashtra. Gandhi claimed the use of centralised software for this, and accused Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar of “protecting those people who have destroyed Indian democracy”.
Large sections in the Congress believe Gandhi is on the right track, and point to his recent Voter Adhikar Yatra in poll-bound Bihar that got much traction. They are effusive in praising his “meticulous preparation” and “faultless execution” towards bringing out cases of “vote fraud”. Gandhi himself described his proof as being absolutely “black and white”.
However, many others are uneasy that the stridency of the attack could “delegitimise Indian democracy”, with serious repercussions.
Plus, even the Gandhi faithfuls are not really clear about his endgame and how long can the campaign be sustained, given the micro charges that were unveiled Thursday after promising explosive revelations.
Asked at the press conference whether he would approach courts on the issue, Gandhi was not forthcoming. In fact, the party has not put forward any specific demand in the wake of the vote theft allegations. And most Congress leaders The Indian Express spoke to had no clarity on this.
Backing the Congress strategy, senior leader Abhishek Singhvi said the party was avoiding “the trap that the BJP is trying to set”. “They are waiting to say that the matter is subjudice and everyone must await the outcome. Our job is to highlight and expose, which we are doing. It is the job of the Election Commission and government to transparently come out with material in rebuttal. That job they are not doing.”
Other Congress leaders too assert this, saying the EC’s response has been far from satisfactory.
Plus, party leaders say, going to court carries the risk of an adverse ruling, in which case the Congress campaign would collapse.
However, even among those who back Gandhi, some are asking if “vote theft” should be the Congress’s primary line of campaign against the BJP – ahead of, for example, the social justice plank, that Gandhi himself was espousing not too long ago. In fact, even in Bihar, the Congress had earlier this year focused on bread and butter issues during a yatra, targeting the Nitish Kumar-led NDA government over migration from the state, the lack of job opportunities, and the string of alleged paper leaks.
But the Congress’s Bihar poll narrative has since then narrowed down to ‘vote theft’, partially driven by the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of poll rolls ordered by the Election Commission just months before voting. Party leaders are also worried about this due to the feedback from the ground which, as per sources, shows that the SIR issue is not resonating and may be forgotten by the time elections come.
In stark contrast is political strategist-turned-full time politician Prashant Kishor’s campaign, which seems to be generating momentum among the youth by asking for votes on the issues of jobs and education.
Gandhi has tried to make a course-correction and link the SIR and consequent voter roll deletions to exclusion from welfare schemes. Sources said a strategy is being worked out that will elaborate on this “link”, along with the promise of guarantees. However, if the combined message is not coherent, many Congress leaders warn, the Mahagathbandhan will lose a golden opportunity to dethrone the “increasingly unpopular” Nitish Kumar government.
A former Congress Working Committee member also worries about the larger implication of Gandhi’s campaign. “It has the potential to delegitimize Indian democracy… Basically what Gandhi is trying to say is that Indian democracy is rigged… For any dataset, the universal principle is a standard deviation of plus/minus two. That is the thumb rule… If the integrity of 95% of the data is satisfactory, then the data set is acceptable. Anomalies will be there…,” the leader says.
A former Congress leader claims that Gandhi is trying to “cover up organisational neglect and decay, and nepotism at the top, by making these allegations”. “Congress people on the ground… the councillors, ward members, booth-level agents, they try to check malpractices. If this sort of voter additions and deletions, as Gandhi claims, have happened, the obvious question is what was your organisation on the ground doing.”
The leader refers to the Mahadevapura Assembly seat in Karnataka, brought up by Gandhi earlier, claiming that a lakh “extra” votes had been added there. “Your organisation did not know, then you don’t have a ground game. This is what happens when booth-level agents are appointed only on paper.”
The leader also says that it is dishonest to claim that a system can be foolproof. “Some anomalies will be there. Every party tries to (claim this). But to claim a national-level conspiracy to rig elections altogether is totally out of order.”
But as Gandhi glides ahead with his vote theft campaign, one thing on his side is that unlike in the past – say during his ‘Chowkidar chor hai’ campaign against the Modi government on the Rafale issue in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, or his Adani-Modi “nexus” line of attack, or his insistence on a caste census – a majority in the Congress are receptive to his vote theft campaign.
Says Singhvi: “(Gandhi’s) perspective must be understood. We are not the government in power, so we have to get our details from states ruled by non-BJP parties, which the EC is not prepared to furnish… The idea is to give an illustrative sample that even if a fraction of this is true… the repercussions as a whole – for a level-playing field, for democracy, for the basic structure – are humungous… This transcends all political parties, affects each and every citizen and impinges very gravely on the reputation of the EC.”