oppn parties New Mantra: Bribing Voters For Not Voting

News Snippets

  • SP drops two candidates owing allegiance to Azam Khan from Rampur and Moradabad
  • In Assam, a controversy erupted after a picture of UPPL leader Benjamin Basumatary, lying on a stack of Rs 500 notes circulated on social media. UPPL is an ally of the BJP
  • AAP's Jalandhar-West MP Sushil Kumar Rinku joins the BJP. He was the only AAP Lok Sabha MP
  • Supreme Court dismisses Centre's plea to review its 2023 verdict in the PMLA case
  • Close save for passengers as they remain unhurt after the wings of two planes graze at Kolkata airport. Pilots derostered and inquiry ordered by DGCA
  • Bengal BJP leader Dilip Ghosh gets notice from the EC as well as the BJP for making ugly remarks about Mamata Banerjee's parentage
  • Sadanand Vasanth Date, who faught terrorists in the 26/11 attack and was awarded the Preisent's Police medal, has been appointed the head of the NIA
  • Centre will borrow Rs 7.5L cr in the first six months of FY25, nearly 50% of the target for the full year
  • 25 stocks, including SBI, will see same day trade settlements from today in the world's fastest settlement mode in both BSE and NSE
  • Stocks recover smartly on Wednesday: Sensex rises 526 points to 72996 and Nifty 118 points to 22123
  • Tennis: Rohan Bopanna-Matthew Ebden reached the semifinals of the Miami Open
  • IPL: records tumble as SRH beat MI in a high-scoring match. SRH score 277/3 with 18 sixes and Mumbai score 246 with 20 sixes to fall short by 31 runs. Atotal of 38 sixes, highest in an IPL match were hit and both teams combined to score 523 runs, the highest aggregate in an IPL match
  • Amul will launch fresh milk in the US
  • IPL: RCB beat Punjab by 4 wickets as Kohli and Karthik shine with the bat
  • India strongly objected to German foreign office remarks over the arrest of delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, called it "biased assumptions"
Delhi Lt Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena says government cannot be run from jail, hints at President's Rule in the capital ////// In a dangerous incident, the wings of two planes grazed while taxiing on the runway at Kolkata airport, all passengers were safe but DGCA ordered an inquiry and the pilots were derostered
oppn parties
New Mantra: Bribing Voters For Not Voting

By Linus Garg
First publised on 2018-05-10 21:14:35

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Linus tackles things head-on. He takes sides in his analysis and it fits excellently with our editorial policy. No 'maybe's' and 'allegedly' for him, only things in black and white.
Trust politicians and political managers to come up new and unique ways of trying to win elections, even if they border on the illegal. First, the ruling Trinamool Congress came up with a ‘novel’ way of capturing panchayats in West Bengal by unleashing its goons on the opposition parties to prevent its candidates from filing nominations. Bengalis are football lovers. There is a saying in Bengali: fanka mathey goal (meaning scoring a goal in an empty field). The TMC wanted to score goals by eliminating the opposing team(s) altogether.

Then, it has now been reported that parties are ‘buying’ voters in Karnataka – but with a difference. Usually, parties bribe voters to cast their votes in their favour. But in Karnataka, parties are paying voters to refrain from voting. In other words, voters are being asked to stay put at home on voting day and enjoy the pint of whiskey that is being given along with the money. A few Muslim voters have alleged that the BJP has approached them in this fashion. There is no law in India which says that a person has to compulsorily cast his vote. There is also no way for the Election Commission to know if the person has been bribed to refrain from voting. Since voters in particular localities will be targeted, the workers of the party can easily keep tabs on whether the bribed voters go to the booths and can even intimidate them into not going on strength of their ‘agreement’. It seems a foolproof way of winning elections by eliminating votes from persons inimical to the party’s ideology. It used to happen by force in the heydays of the Left Front in West Bengal when jeep-borne and gun-toting goons used to cordon off multi-storied apartments and posh localities to intimidate voters unlikely to vote for the Communists. But it is happening for the first time in Karnataka by bribing and in an organized manner.

It is a sad reflection of the times that ideology, performance or personalities no longer count or even if they do, are not enough to win votes. Parties have to indulge in all kinds of underhand – hence illegal – activities that are driven by money and muscle power. There is an urgent need to reform electoral laws to reduce the unholy nexus of money and muscle with the election process.