COMMUNISTS 'SWEEP' KOLKATA BY RIGGING
Dr. Jai Maharaj
Communists "sweep" Kolkata by rigging
By Udayan Namboodiri
The Organiser
Sunday, July 3, 2005
On Sunday June 19, the people of Kolkata and its eastern
satellite, Salt Lake, were exposed to election rigging of
an unimaginable scale. Booth jamming, voter intimidation
and large scale takeover of election centres are passe in
West Bengal. With the police and administration in the
pockets of the ruling party, the CPI(M)-led Left Front,
the communists never shied away from using these methods
to perpetuate their rule. But this time, the technology
of election manipulation took a generational leap when
the Marxists proved that even electronic voters' machines
(EVMs) can be manipulated to produce wondrous outcomes.
Sure enough, when the results were declared two days
later, nobody was surprised. Enough reports and
editorials on rigging had been produced in the
interregnum to convince the ordinary Bengali that the
CPI(M)'s would have no problem in recapturing Kolkata
Municipal Corporation (KMC) after a gap of five years and
retaining Salt Lake Municipality. What left everyone
shaken, however, was the impunity with which the
Stalinists deployed their terrifying methods. A
metropolis of 14 million, which includes the creamiest
layer of the Bengali bhadraloke elite -- the same class
whose forebears authored the emergence of Indian
nationalism and sculpted the nation's democratic
principles -- was made to realise the grim fact that
under Communism's steamroller, nothing is sacred or dear.
In the past, the CPI(M) had always faced a problem with
putting their well-known rigging technology to work in
Kolkata. Unlike in the villages where thousands of people
could be intimidated without much difficulty, the reality
of the state capital, where the electorate is more
educated and the different arms of civil society,
including the media, are omnipresent, threw up some
formidable obstacles. During the municipal election of
1990, a half-baked attempt at transplanting the brilliant
experiment of the countryside blew up on the Communists'
face when the entire rigging process was captured on
camera and splashed on the front pages of every
newspaper. That sobered up the apparatchik somewhat and
over the next 15 years, the Communists more or less
reconciled to their marginalisation in Kolkata and its
agglomerate.
But, in 2005, they produced a profoundly new rabbit out
of their hat. Aware of the collective strength of the
Opposition in the city, the Communist think tank decided
to deploy not only their conventional weaponry ( booth
capturing, intimidation, etc) but also something which
can be described as a "nuclear option". The same
technology which has proved so productive for democracy
in the larger India, was distorted by the Marxists in
West Bengal to "win" Kolkata.
First, the basic facts. This was the first time that the
West Bengal State Election Commission (WBSEC) used EVMs
for a poll under its management. Last month's municipal
elections in the other parts of the state were conducted
using old-fashioned ballot papers and boxes. It must be
kept in mind that unlike the Central Election Commission,
the State Election Commissions are not independent of the
executive in that their heads are always IAS officers
from the same state's pool. But, by some Constitutional
quirk, the same federal election ombudsman which has
gained wide international repute for managing Lok Sabha
and Assembly elections, is powerless to intervene when a
state election commission performs the role of a loyal
dog to the ruling party. An understanding of this basic
systemic flaw must form the backdrop of any analysis of
June 12 rape of democracy in Kolkata.
The CPI(M) had always faced a problem with putting their
well-known rigging technology to work in Kolkata. Unlike
in the villages where thousands of people could be
intimidated.
When polling commenced at 7 am, hundreds of EVMs in
booths across Kolkata simply failed to function. So, for
the better part of the morning hours -- a period which
usually sees the largest turnout -- there was no polling
at all. Many people left and never came back to check
whether the EVMs had been repaired. The secretary of the
WBSEC, Kalyan Kumar Chakraborty, later made a surprising
disclosure to the local press. He said that in view of
the "unexpected crisis", it was decided to change all the
defective EVMs.
Now, two things are to be noted here. Under the Central
Election Commission's rules, each EVM, which is
technically a booth, has to be inspected in the presence
of the polling agents of all the parties prior to polling
day. They are put to use only after all the agents have
verified their efficacy and the EVMs are set to zero in
their presence. Was this done in Kolkata and Salt Lake?
Obviously not. First of all, the WBSEC does not have such
a rule. Secondly, even if there was one, the hasty
replacement by a new set of EVMs was highly irregular.
And why didn't the EVMs work? Chakrabarty had the gall to
state on record that "most of the polling officials
failed to connect the jack behind the EVMs properly".
This confirms that the state officials (all CPI(M)
supporters by virtue of their membership of the CPI-M
controlled Coordination Committee of State Government
Employees) were not given basic training in the handling
of these machines. So why call it an election in the
first place?
It also transpires that the EVMs put to work on June 19
were not identical to the ones used by the central
Election Commission. Chakraborty revealed that the
machines used for this election was different from the
ones used in elections held elsewhere in India. "The jack
used for these machines are different from those used in
national and Assembly elections. The (public sector)
Electronic Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) was
contacted and told to supply for future elections only
those ones used in national elections to avoid a repeat
of the confusion created on Sunday."
How is it that the WBSEC, which bought 5,000 of these
EVMs from ECIL did not verify the technology behind them?
Is this all bureaucratic bungling, or something quite
deeper? The "results" reveal the deeper truth. The
"confusion" was deliberately created so that manipulated
EVMs could be issued. And in each of these machines,
whichever button the voter pressed, the mandate went,
albeit unknown to him, to the CPI(M). The wires had been
jinxed in advance to ensure just that.
The booth-wise results of the so-called election will
reveal the full extent to which this hoax was carried
out. Already, Kolkata's leading daily, Bartaman, edited
by the fearless Barun Sengupta, has started reproducing
micro-results which confirm the worst fears of all lovers
of democracy. Marxist candidates have got huge leads,
sometimes by 90 per cent in the very booths where the
EVMs "broke down".
What happened in Kolkata on June 19 is a national shame.
When will the national intelligentsia wake up and
recognise the simple fact that what we are seeing in
Marxist West Bengal is nothing but a macabre rape of
democracy?
(The author is Senior Editor, The Pioneer)
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