First things first. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s victory in Haryana by polling just 0.85% more votes than the Congress party can’t erase the stigma of falling short of a majority in the Lok Sabha by a whopping 32 seats in the general elections, becoming ignominiously dependent for five long years on not one but two allies and living in dread of betrayal and back-stabbing which who else but the BJP has legitimised since 2014.
After the incredulous Haryana outcome, the Congress party has enough and more reasons to question the Electronic Voting Machines and the Election Commission of India, which it is doing in all earnestness. But the Opposition party must also turn the torch inwards for scathingly unsparing self-examination. This is a must to avert a repetition of Haryana and capitalise on anti-BJP sentiments which confined the saffron party to only 260 Lok Sabha seats even as Narendra Modi and Amit Shah were openly boasting of bagging more than 400 seats.
Overall, the BJP today is as unpopular as it was proven in June when the Parliamentary polls results hit it like a tornado. Just look at how it fell on its face in Jammu & Kashmir, despite relentless electioneering by Modi, Shah and Rajnath Singh. The Congress party should meticulously press home its advantage and expand its voter base across the country for upcoming elections.
EVMs were never beyond doubt or reproach. They were vociferously questioned before not only by the Congress party but even by the BJP. The BJP’s GVL Narasimha Rao wrote a whole book titled Democracy at Risk! Can we trust our Electronic Voting Machines? The book’s foreword was penned by none other than LK Advani. The book methodically trashed the sleek voting gadgets as tools of deceit for snatching poll victories by sheer fraud. Riding Rao’s expose, Advani and other top BJP leaders travelled the length and breadth of India to debunk EVMs. The high-pitched campaign was understandable considering that the Sangh Parivar attributed its crushing defeat in the 2009 general elections solely to EVMs.
In 2018, at the Congress party’s Open Plenary Session during Rahul Gandhi’s presidentship, a resolution was adopted to go back to paper ballot to ensure transparency and credibility of elections. “There are apprehensions among the political parties and the people over the misuse of EVMs to manipulate the outcome contrary to the popular verdict,” the resolution said. The Opposition party trained its guns on EVMs before the 2024 general elections too. Although the Congress party has raised the issue of EVMs off and on, it has never gone the whole hog. After the BJP snatched a victory in Haryana from the jaws of defeat last week, the Congress party is once again questioning the devices.
But I must admit that I fail to understand how poll officials could muster the courage to tamper with EVMs in Haryana where the Congress party was so upbeat and sure to win. Were they not scared of being taken to task by a victorious Congress party for trying to help the underdog BJP win?
Despite a decade of BJP rule, the Congress held its own in Haryana. Without being unnecessarily confrontational, it held its head high and gave as well as it got. One reason for being confident and buoyant was that Haryana’s Congressmen, unlike their counterparts in other states, were not raided by the Income Tax Department or targeted by the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate. In such a scenario, how did poll officials dare to manipulate EVMs, as the Congress is alleging after its shock defeat? Did they go out on a limb to help the BJP despite the BJP itself virtually conceding defeat? Were all of them closet Sanghis? The story just doesn’t add up. May be there are elements and dimensions that I’m completely unaware of, and the Congress indeed has a strong case contrary to my perception at this point of time.
From the Opposition party’s prism, there is a crying need for organisational introspection. The Congress party must devise a strategy to deal with the vaulting ambitions of its state level leaders. Gandhi tried to stem the factionalism in the Haryana Congress by cajoling Kumari Selja and Bhupinder Hooda into shaking hands on the dais for all to see. He even remarked that his brave lions sometimes fight among themselves but they always heed his unity calls. The filmi line could well have been written by dialogue guru Javed Akhtar. But did it serve any purpose whatsoever?
Evidently, Selja and Hooda were hell bent on doing each other in but ended up doing in the Congress in Haryana. They paid no heed to Gandhi. In fact, Gandhi has initiated quite a few handshakes but none has yielded results so far. In Rajasthan, the Congress party was swept out of power after Gandhi made Sachin Pilot and Ashok Gehlot shake hands. In Madhya Pradesh, Kamal Nath and Jyotiraditya Scindia shook hands in Gandhi’s presence but to no avail — a disunited Congress was trounced by the BJP. Similarly, last year Gandhi made T S Singh Deo the deputy chief minister at the eleventh hour to somehow retain Chhattisgarh but the Deo-Bhupesh Baghel enmity still cost the Congress party the central India state.
Even as the Congress party intensifies its agitation against EVMs, the high command must issue a stern warning that the days of factionalism are over and state leaders must sink their differences and put up a joint fight against the BJP — or get out. All Congressmen from top to bottom must realise the truth of the saying “united we stand, divided we fall”.
The author is an independent, Pegasused reporter and commentator on foreign policy and domestic politics
