This was painted on a wall in Gaya

Contrary to the newspaper headlines I really feel that the ballot did not win against the bullet, not in 5 prominent states at least. The ballot lost the battle when Naxals killed 16 people and injured many more on the very day when security ought to have been absolutely tight. The ballot lost the battle when you have signs like these (shown above) which were so blatantly painted across these five states so that it was easily photographed by the media. In fact the media helped these Naxals when they conveyed this message through their columns to millions of voters who could be influenced by these threats. Tell me frankly, if you have such messages painted on a street close to your home will you guys go to cast your vote? And be practical please.

If you guys are wondering why the hell am I talking like this just have a look at this table of percentage of voting for these five states which were affected by naxal violence (these figures are courtesy Times of India).

1.    Orissa -     64% in 2004 and 53% in 2009.

2.    Jharkhand - 54% in 2004 and 50% in 2009.

3.    Bihar - 58% in 2004 and 46% in 2009 (ridiculous, even J&K has better voting percentage than this).

4.    Chhattisgarh - 52% in 2004 and 50% in 2009.

5.    Andhra Pradesh - 68% in 2004 and 65% in 2009.

Now, won’t you guys agree that these percentages are enough to influence the outcome of the results in these seats? Also, this percentage is out of the number of registered voters for that particular year, which means that 1% of voters in 2009 is likely to be much more than 1% voters of 2004 (If anything is going up in these days it’s our population, isn’t it?). And difference between winning and losing is only required to be just one vote. So please, if anyone says that it really does not matter think again. For the record, the total number of seats in these states which went to polls were 62. And that’s a huge number which can change the national political landscape of this country. Agreed, that there may be other reasons also for this decline in the percentage of votes polled but decline in such large numbers especially when awareness amongst voters is likely to be much more than in 2004 can only be attributed to the Naxal threat. There is no doubt about this in mind. Some of you would say that all the seats in these states may not have been affected by Naxal threat. May be. But before you jump into this conclusion have a look at this map of Naxal affected areas of the country.

This map, courtesy Wikipedia, shows the areas influenced by Naxals in 2007

Yeah, the map is of 2007 vintage. If anything the influence of Naxals has only increased in these two years. 14 attacks in just one day very much prove this. Don’t you think? Now compare this with the areas where elections took place on 16 April (please look at dark blue and grey areas where polls were held).

Photo courtesy Election Commission of India

Now you guys see what I mean. These areas are exactly where Naxals have been very active. And this brings us to another question. If Wikipedia can have a map which shows the areas under the influence of Naxals I’m sure the Election Commission of India must have had better information than this. And if they did why was polling in these areas held on one single day? Why wasn’t it spread out to three or four more days when security forces could have been redeployed to counter naxal threat which would’ve resulted in not only a better turn out of voters but also may have avoided the loss of 16 precious lives. Not only this, if you believe Arnab Goswami and his reporters of Times Now the ultimate authority in deployment of security forces is not the DG police of these states but the Election Commission itself. I really don’t believe this. The dates were announced on 03 March by the commission which means the security review and deployment of forces had already been worked out by the commission. You got to be kidding me! Had that been the case there would not have been so many demands from states for more and more troops in the last one and a half months and there would not have been a continuous redeployment of forces. It was more like a case of Election Commission trying to meet the requirement of having enough security forces keeping in mind the dates which were announced and not the other way round which was definitely more logical. What a shame! Quite clearly, the security forces were not enough.

Among North Eastern states too the percentage of votes polled has gone down drastically in Assam (from 69% to 62%) and Mizoram (from 63% to 52%). This too can be attributed to the ongoing insurgency in these states (Remember the recent blasts in Guwahati?). Thankfully, they account for only 4 seats where the results could have been influenced by the threat of insurgents. Also please note that the percentege of voting has increased in states like J&K (from 44% to 48%), Arunanchal Pradesh (from 56% to 62%) and Meghalaya (53% to 64%). Well, these are the states where security forces have the upper hand and have not allowed the terrorists to succeed in disrupting the election process. Therefore the increase.

It is for these very reasons that I say that the BALLOT DID NOT WIN THE WAR AGAINST THE BULLET. I might just file a case against these people for this inefficiency and unnecessary loss of lives. The Election Commission seems to have bungled up, big time. Don’t you guys think so?

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Posted on April 17th, 2009 Best Articles, India calling • Tags: ballot, bullet, elections, Naxal, results, violence. • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback