Boycott polls, stop vote chori

It took these assembly elections for people to start thinking that elections, courts are no remedy. One proposal since long is that the entire opposition should boycott elections and resign their seats from all the legislatures: Lok Sabha and state assemblies. Make the BJP look like a usurper. Deny it the legitimacy in the eyes of our people and the world.  On the one hand these opposition parties talk about vote chori but they contest elections with a vague hope of somehow winning. 

If they believe in what they say about vote chori and massive targeted deletions why are they participating in these fake elections and sitting in the legislatures which are elected on the basis of vote chori and deletions? That only makes a stolen mandate legitimate, doesn’t it? If Mamata Banerjee is really serious about rejecting the declared mandate and refuse to resign it means that she doesn’t recognise the to-be constituted Assembly. Which means she is considering the outgoing legislature still valid? 

In that case she should say all her party people who got elected in this illegitimate election would quit the house, and she should make them quit. Then her stance carries conviction. If one says ‘my party’s winners are ok but not your party’s winners are illegally elected’, what does that say about her conviction? If she had said, ‘look, after the deletion of 93 lakh voters and denial of voting rights to 28 lakh people even, if I had won the entire, the election process was vitiated and I would have refused to consider it as legitimate’,  then it would be considered genuine and her stance as taken out of conviction. 

Now, sadly, she is open to be accused of playing a sore loser. The accusation has strength. With the large scale deletions and humongous number of ‘under adjudication category’ voters not allowed to vote, it is time that all opposition parties sit together and do some serious thinking.Look at Bihar: Two boys took out Vote Adhikar yatra. They alleged that large scale voter deletions happened. 

Then why did they at all contest? Looking at the surging crowds, they fancied that they’d somehow win? So in reality disenfranchised people did not matter to them? If they won deletions and disenfranchisement did not matter? What mattered was only their win or defeat? Disenfranchisement matters only when these opposition parties lose? Otherwise it doesn’t matter?

Boycotting elections and resigning from legislatures until this institutional capture is broken might sound and look like an ideal but an impractical solutions. But very rarely the ideal and the practical converge in real life. It’s no more a game played among political parties. It’s the Republic that’s at stake. It’s our Republic. We gave the constitution unto ourselves. Only a peaceful, Gandhian ‘feet on the ground’ movement can save our 1950 compact. The values embedded in that 1950 compact: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Justice, Secularism, can be defended only by that.

Are we ready to face the challenge? Each one of us has to decide. And prepare for a collective action. Coordinated action. Set aside every other agenda and work for rescuing the republic and the Idea of India. Keep in mind that everyone who lives in this land owns this country. It’s not owned by any one denomination, religion, caste, creed, region, color eating and dressing habits and traditions. It’s owned by everyone.

– Dr. Parakala Prabhakar Political commentator