DIDI should call elected TMC representatives to quit
Peoples thinking that elections and courts are no remedy
(Dr Parakala Prabhakar)
It took these assembly elections for people to start thinking that elections, courts are no remedy. The idea of India is threatened. It’s being electoral arithmetic and calculations.
I’ve been arguing for a long time that the entire opposition should boycott elections and resign their seats from all the legislatures: Lok Sabha and state assemblies. Make the BJP look like a usurper. Deny it the legitimacy in the eyes of our people and the world.
On the one hand these opposition parties shout about vote chori but they contest elections with a vague hope of somehow winning them. Little do they realise that the entire thing is fixed. They refuse to believe it.
Either they’re naive or they are not sincere when they shout about ‘Vote Chori’.
If they believe in what they say about vote chori and massive targeted deletions why are they participating in these fake elections and sitting in the legislatures which are elected on the basis of vote chori and deletions? That only makes a stolen mandate legitimate, doesn’t it?
Let me say this about Mamata Banerjee’s stand. If she’s really serious about rejecting the declared mandate and refuse to resign it means that she doesn’t recognise the to-be constituted Assembly. Which means she is considering the outgoing legislature still valid. In that case she should say all her party people who got elected in this illegitimate election would quit the house, and she should make them quit. Then her stance carries conviction.
If you say ‘my party’s winners are ok but not your party’s winners are illegally elected’, what does that say about her conviction?
If she had said, ‘look, after the deletion of 93 lakh voters and denial of voting rights to 28 lakh people even, if I had won the entire, the election process was vitiated and I would have refused to consider it as legitimate’, then it would be considered genuine and her stance as taken out of conviction. Now, sadly, she is open to be accused of playing a sore loser. The accusation has strength.
With the large scale deletions and humongous number of ‘under adjudication category’ voters not allowed to vote, I think it’s time that all opposition parties sit together and do some serious thinking.
Look at Bihar: Two boys took out Vote Adhikar yatra. They alleged that large scale voter deletions happened. Then why did they at all contest? Looking at the surging crowds, they fancied that they’d somehow win? So in reality disenfranchised people did not matter to them? If they won deletions and disenfranchisement did not matter?
What mattered was only their win or defeat? Disenfranchisement matters only when these opposition parties lose? Otherwise it doesn’t matter?
Any one eligible person who’s struck off the electoral role should worry everyone who’s in the electoral roll. shouldn’t it? Ok recollect what the SC judge Bagchi said. If the deletions are more than the margins of victory then the SC should seriously examine it. What it means is this: my deletion becomes an issue only when the preferences of those who are not deleted! If they chose a party/candidate and the margin of that party’s/candidate’s victory is less than the number of the number of my deleted brothers and sisters do we matter!
Can a court be more grotesque???
After the results nobody talks about the 63 who were deleted from the electoral rolls in Bihar. Elections are over and they don’t matter to any of us.
No party bothers about them.
Same thing in TN, Kerala, Puducherry. States that did not go for elections but had SIR, like UP, where 2.83 crore deletions happened, what about them? We don’t care?
We don’t bother about Manipur anyway even if it’s been burning for the last two years or more. In what way are these deleted voters different?
Because there are no elections there now, nobody talks about them. No political party, no media, not even so called independent digital platforms talk about them. 2.83 crore people don’t matter to us when there’s no election?
Boycotting elections and resigning from legislatures until this institutional capture is broken might sound and look like an ideal but an impractical solutions.
But let me tell you, very rarely the ideal and the practical converge in real life. In our nation’s life this is the moment that calls precisely for that convergence.
What is ideal is the only practical way forward now. And what is practical is the ideal, and nothing else.
In other words, practical is ideal and ideal is practical at this juncture of our Republic’s life.
Our Republic is in deep crisis. In mortal danger.
If you want me to believe that MB is a real crusader, let her decide that all her newly elected MLAs resign or refuse to take oath in the new legislature that she questions the legitimacy of. Then she will carry conviction in my reckoning. Otherwise she will be vulnerable to the charge that she’s merely a sore loser. Even I can’t defend her if someone charges of that.
But Is she?
Can she do that: make her MLAs resign and refuse to accept the legitimacy of the new Assembly that came out of this phoney election?
Can the opposition bite the bullet?
It is not business as usual situation anymore. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.
If political parties don’t do that, if they can’t do that, they should at least stand behind the civil society when it does that.
It’s no more a game played among political parties.
It’s the Republic that’s at stake.
It’s our Republic.
We gave the constitution unto ourselves.
Only a peaceful, Gandhian ‘feet on the ground’ movement can save our 1950 compact.
The values embedded in that 1950 compact: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Justice, Secularism, can be defended only by that.
Otherwise not.
Are we ready to face the challenge?
Each one of us has to decide. And prepare for a collective action. Coordinated action. Set aside every other agenda and work for rescuing the republic and the Idea of India.
Keep in mind that everyone who lives in this land owns this country. It’s not owned by any one denomination, religion, caste, creed, region, colour, eating and dressing habits and traditions. It’s owned by everyone.
Forces that are in disagreement with this idea of India assaulted it and worked for a hundred years to undermine it. Let’s work for a few months to defend it now.
There’s no alternative to defending the essential character of India, a country, a territory, a space that’s for everybody.
(Author is Political Analyst)