Far too many irregularities in West Bengal
Reports of electoral fraud in Bengal are of a serious nature and deserve the immediate intervention of the Election Commission on a comprehensive scale. Free and fair elections are at the core of India's democratic structure which should not be shaken, even slightly. In Trinamool Congress-ruled Bengal, it is not that only a few booths have been supposedly affected — though even that number is unacceptable — but hundreds are reported to have been compromised. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has demanded a re-poll in more than 800 polling booths across nine constituencies in the State. Some 300 of these are in the Assembly segments of Mangalkote, Ausgram and Ketugram in the parliamentary constituency of Bolpur while several others are in Bardhaman East, Bardhaman-Durgapur and Arambag. And it not just the CPI(M) which has raised a red flag but the other major Opposition parties, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, that have complained of electoral fraud. The media has also reported extensively on instances of voter intimidation, booth capturing and assault on Opposition workers. Rules regarding assembling of large numbers of people in proximity to polling stations seem to have been violated, while video feeds from 180 of the 366 webcams placed inside the polling stations were not available for much of the day. For now, however, special election observer Sudhir Kumar Rakesh, who was sent after the Election Commission received reports of local poll officers being ineffective, has trashed all Opposition complaints except one from Hooghly, where a Trinamool Congress worker was giving proxy votes. The Chief Electoral Officer for the State, Mr Sunil Kumar Gupta, has claimed that polling has been free and fair.
The disconnect is possibly because much of the rigging seems to have been ‘soft', as opposed to violent take-overs of polling booths or stuffing of ballots by the thousands. Soft rigging may not necessarily drastically change the overall mandate, but it can turn a closely-contested battle into a one-sided one. This is what the Trinamool Congress is facing in some constituencies in this rare four-cornered lok Sabha election. Hence, there have been reports of ‘booth jamming' wherein party workers line up outside a polling station and either don't move or move at a snail's pace, thereby deliberately causing hour-long delays that discourage ‘genuine' voters from waiting for their turn and make them turn away from voting. This tactic, initially mastered by the left, is especially effective in manipulating thin margins. Also, even though there has been a steady stream of reports on low-intensity clashes from Shalimar, Bankra and liluah in Howrah, Kanksa and Ichhlabad in Burdwan, and Kopai in Birbhum, there has been no large-scale violence in the State. This, coupled with high a voter turnout, may easily lull observers into overlooking some instances of fraud.