“Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people,…”
-Karl Marx
In recent years, multiple global democracy watchdogs have raised concerns about democracy in India. In a recent report, the Sweden-based V-DEM described India as “one of the worst autocratisers.” During Modi’s rule, most pillars of the democratic system – the executive, the judiciary, and the media – have come under the influence of the ruling party.
During the 2024 elections, the role of election commission has become questionable in many respects, ECI has repeatedly refused to address the opposition’s concerns regarding the potential of electoral manipulation by tampering with the EVMs. One of the reasons to fear that ECI is politically biased is that two of the ECI commissioners have been picked by the Modi government and the third by the president at the prime minister’s recommendation. ECI denied the opposition’s demand of cross-verification of votes cast on electronic voting machines with a voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT). Currently, VVPAT slips from only five randomly selected polling stations in each Assembly segment are verified. In 2019, a mismatch of VVPAT and EVM vote counts was found in 370+ parliamentary seats. The Supreme Court of India turned down the pleas by Association for Democratic Rights and others for reviving paper ballots and also cross-verification of votes cast on EVMs with VVPAT. In the Supreme Court ECI said it will take 6-7 days to cross-verify the votes cast on EVM with VVPAT.
Without cross-verification a voter can not know how many votes were polled and how many votes were counted.
In India, whereas it took more than a month to conduct elections, still why the votes cannot be cross-verified taking 6 days to address the concerns of the voters? The ECI is not uploading form 17c, a record document which gives the number of votes polled per polling booth. It is compiled per constituency and released to the public so that there is no confusion on counting day. The voting percentage is changing by 5-6 percent after a few days on ECI website and the ECI is refusing to provide the total number of voters on the same website. This is clear manipulation. Before the 2024 elections, the Election Commission gave details of the number of votes polled and the total number of voters in each polling booth within 24 hours. They are not doing that now.
The hearing on the application filed by ADR to upload polling booth-wise voter turnout data on the ECI Web site during the Lok Sabha elections is adjourned. There is a lot of suspicion against the Election Commission of India. Nominations of many candidates who wanted to contest against Modi, Amit Shah and other big leaders of BJP were rejected by ECI. There is a lot of tampering happening in voters’ lists. Thousands of Muslim voters are being deleted in Gujarat, U.P. and other states.
The Election Commission has done nothing about it. In Sambhal village of U.P. where most of the voters are Muslim, the voters were assaulted by the police and denied from casting their votes.
Marx explained the essence of capitalist democracy splendidly and said: “The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament.” The current government is not even allowing people to decide which member of the ruling class will misrepresent the people.
People disillusioned with the state machinery showed their anger by boycotting the elections in different parts of Karnataka, Nagaland, Tamil Nadu, and Maharastra. Fascism can only suffer some setback through voting. The people must participate in revolutionary people’s movements to defeat this anti-people fascist government.
