The Big Story: Dirty politics

The polls for three Rajya Sabha seats in Gujarat on Tuesday turned out to be a dramatic cliffhanger, the likes of which the country has rarely seen in elections to the Upper House of Parliament. At stake was not just a seat. The battle was turned into a full-blown prestige fight between Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah and Congress veteran Ahmed Patel. In the process, the polls became the theatre to display every dirty trick in the electoral book.

As expected, Shah and Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani won their respective seats quite easily, given BJP’s majority in the Assembly. But the third seat, for which the Congress had fielded Patel, the political secretary to its president Sonia Gandhi, was hanging in the balance. In July, six Congress legislators resigned and moved to the BJP. One of them, Balwantsinh Rajput, became the BJP’s candidate to take on Patel.

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Fearing further horse trading, the Congress last week put 44 of its legislators in a flight and sent them to a resort in Bengaluru. Meanwhile, the Income Tax department was used by the Centre to raid the properties of Karnataka Electricity Minister DK Shivakumar, who had organised the stay of the Gujarat legislators and was seen as the fundraiser for Ahmed Patel.

On Tuesday, counting of votes was delayed by over six hours after the Congress complained of violations. Two of the eight Congress legislators – Raghavji Patel and Bholabhai Gohil – who cross voted for the BJP, showed their ballot papers to persons other than the authorised agent. While the returning officer dismissed this complaint in Gujarat, the drama shifted to Delhi, with high-profile delegations from both the BJP and the Congress meeting the Election Commission twice. The BJP, in fact, sent five of its senior Cabinet ministers in what looked like a serious attempt to mount pressure on the election watchdog and ensure counting of the two votes.

It was at this crucial moment that the strength of India’s Constitutional system came to the fore, as the Election Commission, despite overt pressure from powerful Union ministers, decided to stick to the rules and disqualify votes of the two MLAs. Often branded as a toothless agency, the independence displayed by the commission in this critical hour was commendable.

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On the political front, the elections were clearly a blot on democracy and revealed how political parties could stoop to any level to win if the stakes are high enough.

It was also a serious message to the Congress, whose candidate won in the early hours of Wednesday not because of its organisational strength or superior political tactic, but because two of its rebel MLAs could not even do the simple task of hiding the ballot paper from those in the booth. The party has a lot of catching up to do if it wants to put up even a semblance of a fight in the upcoming Assembly elections in Gujarat. It will be up against a ruthless BJP, which has shown that no strategy is foul in the battle for power.

The Big Scroll

  • Anita Katyal on why the BJP desperately wanted to defeat Ahmed Patel in Gujarat. 
  • Shoaib Daniyal writes on how the character of the Rajya Sabha has changed over the years, making it a stage for high command politics. 

Punditry

  1. In the Indian Express, Gulzar Natarajan makes a case for lateral entry into the Indian Administrative Service. 
  2. Vidya Subramaniam in The Hindu on why the collective targeting of the Opposition is quite unprecedented in Indian politics. 
  3. In the Tribune, Hasan Suroor on what India’s pro-Israel tilt could mean for the future of its West Asia policy. 

Giggles

Don’t miss

Vinita Govindarajan reports on why scientists have decided to take to the streets on August 9.

“The situation has become more dire now, said researchers. In June, the country’s largest Research and Development organisation, which runs 37 laboratories, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, declared a financial emergency. Its Director General Girish Sahni told Indo-Asian News Service that they had hardly enough funds to support new research projects.

“In most other countries, 2.5%-3.5% of the Gross Domestic Product is allocated for scientific research in the budget,” said Soumitro Banerjee, professor at the department of Physical Sciences, IISER Kolkata. “In the India, it is only around 0.85% of the GDP. This is far smaller than anything needed to make any kind of breakthrough in science.”