By Haider Abas
The Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) Narendra Modi government 3.0 has begun. The entire Opposition had raised many doubts about Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) but Election Commission of India (ECI)-nothing short of being an extended office of BJP, cared a fig. In fact, apart from practically every institution of the country undermined, in the last decade, ECI, has come out to be a cropper. Throughout the elections, when the so-called Model Code of Conduct (MCC) was in place, ECI did not give a single-audience to Congress led India alliance. It just went blind folded when the care-taker PM Narendra Modi gave appointment to four-Under Secretaries in his office, gave a one-month extension to army chief. In fact, what worthy should have been was to be a refusal from army-chief, for any such doles, as an answer to not to politicize army.
The long demand, of Opposition parties, for EVM to be 100% matched with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) will always remain a far cry, as ECI will never lend an ear and Supreme Court, never likely to consider it. But, what matters here, is to put into perspective as to how ECI, through EVM, has finally come to the fore, to discredit democracy! Can anyone deny that today, unlike in the yesteryears, every poll-booth has an assigned number, and before the advent of EVM, all the ballot votes, were mixed-up and then counted, but now, in the post-EVM scenario, the anonymity of a voter, has been thrown open!
In today’s voting, it is only a matter of few hours, after the results are declared, that one can know the exact number of votes polled, on a particular polling booth, which is where ECI wants to win kudos, but the dark underbelly of this whole process, is what needs to be probed. The worst is that from it, the political parties and their candidates, can easily discover, as to the number of votes notched-up from every particular polling booth, hence, it can now easily be deciphered as to what caste, class, religious people, voted for whom? In a society deeply polarized like India on caste and religious lines, everyone knows about every inhabitation, from every lane and a by-lane, colonies and apartments, in terms of its residents, their numeric strengths, literacy, affluence etc. The urban city areas bears no exception.
Hence, a basti ( dwelling place) of Jatav, Dhanuk, Balmiki, Khatik, Ravi Dasya, Kewat, Mallah, Brahmin, Vaish, Thakur, Yadav, Kurmi, Pasi, Jat, Qureshi, Ansaris, Pathan or Syed, Shia, Sunni, Christian or Sikhs, etc, voting for a particular party affiliated with a particular ideology, can easily be singled-out. Through EVM now, even mixed neighborhoods stand the same test. This is what is the most devastating and debilitating aspect of EVM, which serves naked to every voter’s mandate, as no more, is the privacy of a voter, the most beautiful aspect of democracy, can be guarded. In fact, it has now been thrown out open!
This will now allow a free flow of fascism to grow. There is already an infrastructural-fascism in place in India. An inhabitation or a locality where Jatavs reside has the lowest priority for any development project, a Muslim Mohalla is of course to the ever last-despite the much touted claim for the making of smart cities. Forget infrastructure, a Muslim majority area, will not find any government school, government overhead water-tank, government primary health center, of course, a police station instead! Such has been the saga of the last as many years, of which Justice Rajender Sachar report was a stark reminder. After this consistent discrimination against Muslims, the time had come, that Muslims have started to lack even behind Dalits.
Consider a news emanating from Rampur (UP), where BJP alleges, is that in a village of 100 percent Muslims, 2322 votes were polled, and not a single vote had gone to BJP, whereas, 532 houses were given to the village under PM Awas Yojna. This is what EVM has exposed. Only the naives can now expect any development project to ever reach this village under the present government. A mistake once done will never be repeated (sic).
The words of PM Narendra Modi that Congress would snatch the resources of Hindus and give them to Muslims, have already sent the message across the whole nation. This micro-polling data is now to be spread and shut the lights-off for Muslims, Dalits, Yadavs, Kurmis, Pasis etc, the otherwise Other Backward Classes (OBCs) who do not ascribe the BJP ideology, and who have voted against BJP to safeguard Constitution, which actually had meant the end the reservation provided to SC/STs and OBCs. This EVM has now sealed the fate of the very idea which had claimed that India is a welfare state. This now stands endangered.
ECI Chief Rajiv Kumar had ridiculed Opposition rants on EVM with an Urdu couplet Adhoori hasraton ka ilzam harr baar hum par lagana theek nahi/Wafa khud se nahi hoti khatah EVM ki kahte ho (Don’t every time blame for incomplete desires on me/ It is you who is not faithful and accuse EVM for it), as a satire that when Opposition looses it blames EVM, and never BJP has opposed it, despite its stalwart LK Advani, once opposing it, and ECI has never accepted the idea that EVM may be hacked or otherwise tempered with.
What however has turned the worldwide tables against EVM is that now Elon Musk, the owner of Starlink satellite and X (previously twitter) has sought to eliminate EVM as the risk of it being hacked by ‘humans or AI, while small, is still too high’. But, for our ECI, EVM is a gospel, this is even after when Bangladesh Chief Election Commissioner lauded their EVM to be ‘much better’ than India’s EVM. Our ECI taking up cudgels against EVM will never happen, but the worst vulnerability of the end voter, is what will haunt every citizen. It is here where democracy stands totally disenfranchised.
***
The writer is a former UP State Information Commissioner and a political analyst.