Hunt for grand victories and impact on democratic culture

In the Indian system, margins of win are irrelevant. Searching for an ever-higher margin of victory is, therefore, pure hubris

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 's preoccupation with grander victories in every election seems to be feeding the worst standards of democratic conduct. Does pressure on Opposition candidates to stand down suggest narcissism, or does it reflect an element of nervousness?

Take the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha constituency in Gujarat. It has been a pocket borough of the ruling BJP since 1989.

A report by Newslaundry has revealed that 16 independent candidates had stepped down. Amit Shah won the seat in 2019 with a margin of 557,000 votes but clearly hungers for an even more impressive victory. His supporters are now said to be aiming for a victory margin of one million.

Of the 39 candidates who had filed nominations from Gandhinagar, 9 nominations were cancelled, and 16 candidates withdrew. Only 14 are now left in the fray. The Newslaundry reporter spoke to 10 of the 16 candidates who withdrew; five claimed that they did so under pressure.

A single EVM can list 16 candidates. Anymore, and two EVMs would be required. Clearly, the local BJP leaders wanted to limit the candidates to a single EVM, lending a helping hand to the Election Commission with logistics and limiting possible confusion among voters.

The goal of a 1 million victory margin may, however, be a bit difficult in a constituency with about 2 million voters and with only 66 per cent among them -- 1.28 million – having voted in 2019.

Shah might pause to think whether winning by a handsome margin would make him a better MP. In the Indian system, margins of win are irrelevant -- those who win even by a few votes are equal to those with record-breaking victories. Searching for an ever-higher margin of victory is, therefore, pure hubris.

Equally, a one-vote defeat is as convincing as any. Congress leader C P Joshi in Rajasthan realised that to his cost in the 2008 state assembly elections from the Nathdwara constituency. He was president of the Rajasthan state Congress and a front-runner for the chief minister’s job but lost to the BJP’s Kalyan Singh Chauhan by one vote, apparently because Joshi’s mother, sister, and his own driver had not bothered to cast their votes.

The same fate befell A R Krishnamurthy of Janata Dal (Secular) in 2004 when he lost by one vote to Congress’ R Dhruvnarayan. Krishnamurthy apparently suffered because he had not let his driver take a break from election duty to cast his vote!

The point is that a victory by a single vote is no different from one by a large margin unless one is a narcissist.

The BJP has enough skilled orators and creative strategists among its leaders to draw voters by presenting a compelling vision of a different future. Instead, they seem keen to use cunning. How else does one understand the curious case of Congress candidates withdrawing their nominations in Surat and Indore?

The Opposition candidate in Surat prima facie seems to have connived with the BJP. His proposers, who got his candidature cancelled by claiming that the signature on his nomination papers were not theirs, were, in fact, his own relatives. The fall-back Congress candidate who was also disqualified was also close to him. Once the Congress candidate had let himself be disqualified, nine other candidates, including the only viable challenger left in the field from the Bahujan Samaj Party, also conveniently withdrew their nominations.

There was disquiet in the Surat constituency because the MSME sector, textile sector and even the diamond industry were not doing well. Political observers suggest that the BJP might have still won, though with a slender margin. But that would have sent the dangerous signal that the local business community was unhappy with the BJP.

An easy victory for the BJP has also been engineered at Indore. The Congress candidate filed his nomination papers on April 23. The next day, an attempt to murder charge was added to the accusations against him in an on-going 17-year-old land dispute. On April 29, BJP leader and Madhya Pradesh Cabinet minister Kailash Vijayavargiya announced that he had withdrawn his nomination and joined the BJP! While an election will still be held in Indore, the way to the BJP candidate’s near-certain victory has been considerably eased.

The dismay that such shenanigans evoked within the party was expressed by former Lok Sabha Speaker and eight-time BJP MP from Indore, Sumitra Mahajan, who told the media, “This should not have happened. There was no need for this as BJP’s victory in Indore was a foregone conclusion.” However, the scheming to get the Congress out of the way is being worn like a badge of political skill by Vijayavargiya, himself a long-time legislator from Indore.

This should not be dismissed only as the street-cunning of BJP local leaders. Over the past years, several incidents suggest that the river of guile flows from the top. There is tacit approval for deploying Machiavellian tactics against the Opposition.

Remember the attempt to jail Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on a defamation case so that he would be disqualified from contesting for the next seven years? He was saved by the higher judiciary and international consternation. Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal are in jail when they ought to be campaigning in the Lok Sabha elections, as is K Kavitha of the Bharath Rashtra Samithi, the former deputy chief minister of Delhi Manish Sisodia and former Delhi minister Satyendra Jain. It may be argued that the law has taken its own course in all these cases but it is obvious that the timing of the prosecution will keep key campaigners of the Opposition out of the election.

Changing the rules of the game to ensure a grand victory for the ruling party damages democratic culture by degrading citizens' rights to contest and vote for their representatives. Stealing those rights through bureaucratic and legal subterfuge can neither lead to affirmation in nor greater admiration for the BJP leadership.