The subservience of the Election Commission of India to the Bharatiya Janata Party and the ECI’s policy of going all out to help the ruling clique is more than evident from the just-announced schedule for elections in September-October. There will be polling only for the legislative assemblies of Haryana and the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir in three phases from September 18.
The ECI is deliberately not holding elections in Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Delhi along with Haryana and J&K to give the BJP valuable extra time to get ready to take on the Congress party-led INDIA bloc in the two states and one UT. It has also intentionally shelved by-elections in 46 Assembly constituencies across India in order to oblige the BJP. Keeping the Wayanad election on hold is of course fully justified and valid, considering the scale of the calamity which has struck Rahul Gandhi’s Lok Sabha seat.
Clearly, the ECI decided to lend a hand as the BJP is in dire need of help after losing its Parliamentary majority and poor performance in the first round of by-elections after June 4. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s advocacy of Hindus in Bangladesh shows how desperate the BJP is today to somehow re-ignite Hindutva sentiments in India to keep his ship afloat in difficult times.
After Sheikh Hasina fled to India, Modi has flagged the welfare of Bangladeshi Hindus multiple times to earn brownie points domestically. Paradoxically, amid Modi’s persistent espousal of Hindus in the neighbourhood, Human Rights Watch suddenly revealed how Modi delivered as many as 110 speeches containing Islamophobic remarks targeting Indian Muslims, while campaigning for the Lok Sabha elections after the Model Code of Conduct came into force in March.
Modi is under the impression that exerting pressure publicly on Dhaka to protect Hindus during the upheaval will pay political and electoral dividends. But he is mistaken; he is flogging a dead horse, considering the rout of the BJP candidate in Ayodhya and the sharp decline in passenger traffic at Ayodhya airport which Modi inaugurated three weeks before the consecration of the new Ram temple on January 22. Initially, the Maharshi Valmiki International Airport was handling daily flights to and from 20 Indian cities and there was even talk of international flights to Nepal and Mauritius.
But seven months on, flights from 13 India cities have stopped, obviously because Ram bhakts are not thronging the grand new temple from all corners of the country. The Aastha Special trains launched with such fanfare by Indian Railways post-consecration are also fewer in number today. All this highlights the fading appeal of the Ram temple, forcing Modi to play the religion card in despair via Hindus in Bangladesh. In such challenging times, the BJP naturally wants all hands on deck, including the tried and trusted ECI!
And the ECI, helmed by Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar, has been most obliging. It is not holding elections in Maharashtra along with Haryana, although the two states had gone to the polls together in 2019. The terms of the Haryana and Maharashtra assemblies end on November 3 and 9, while Jharkhand’s and Delhi’s term concludes in January and February 2025, respectively.
The deferment of elections in Maharashtra is a blatant example of the ECI’s favouritism. It has misused its power to give valuable extra time to the BJP-Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde)-Nationalist Congress Party (Ajit Pawar) coalition to put its act together in the fight against the Congress-Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray)-Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar) phalanx. Kumar’s explanation with a straight face that the Maharashtra polls will be held later due to the security requirement in J &K, a string of festivals and heavy rainfall in Maharashtra doesn’t stand scrutiny.
Similarly, the BJP needs more time in Jharkhand. So the ECI decided against holding elections there along with the polls in Haryana and J&K. Elections have been deliberately delayed in Jharkhand so that the BJP can raise its game against the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, Congress party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal whose fortunes have improved thanks to Chief Minister’s Hemant Soren’s trial by fire. Jharkhand is currently in a state of flux. Let’s see how long the BJP takes to convince Champai Soren to ditch the JMM and cross over.
Modi keeps propagating the “One Nation, One Election” concept; he rooted for it even on Thursday in his Independence Day speech; but the ECI did not implement it to spare the BJP’s blushes. If the ECI had put into practice Modi’s pet project and held simultaneous elections in J&K, Haryana, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Delhi along with 46 pending assembly by-elections, given the country’s mood the results would have surely cast a shadow on the BJP’s narrow win in the general elections and embarrassed the Modi government no end. The ECI did not allow itself to be carried away by Modi’s rhetoric; it acted in the BJP’s best interests as a discerning loyalist.
As far as J&K is concerned, the ECI has been working hand in glove with the BJP for a very long time. By using the delimitation tool, ECI increased the number of seats in J&K assembly to 90 seats from 83. The number of seats in the Hindu-majority Jammu region has risen from 37 to 43, while in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley it has risen from 46 to only 47; Jammu has gained as many as six seats compared to just one in the Valley. The magic figure for coming to power in J&K is now 46. By hiking the number of seats in Jammu to 43 from 37, the ECI has brought the BJP tantalisingly close to coming to power. If Modi’s dreams of installing a Hindu CM in the Muslim-majority region is somehow achieved, the ECI’s contribution shouldn’t go unacknowledged.
By holding elections only in Haryana and J&K — and delaying the polls in Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Delhi — the ECI has given the BJP a badly-needed breather after the June 4 verdict suddenly loosened BJP-Modi’s grip on India.
The author is an independent, Pegasused reporter and commentator on foreign policy and domestic politics
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