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.
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. 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.
It is therefore important that we address this concern before it becomes a fake narrative with a strong hold,” said a second party leader. “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. 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. 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. 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.”
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. Had the allegations been true, people would have come out in protest,” said a senior BJP leader who was part of the Bihar campaign. 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. 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.
