Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi’s ‘vote chori’ strategy has a sound theoretical basis. As scholars have pointed out, the act of voting has an almost religious significance for the Indian electorate. Citizens are fiercely protective of their right to vote and exercise it with great enthusiasm. Logically, any perceived threat to free and fair elections is bound to spark mass public outrage and spontaneous protests. The trouble is, the theory doesn’t fit the current context.
Gandhi has claimed that EVMs are being tampered with and that his party’s support base is being systematically disenfranchised through the SIR. The India bloc meeting on Wednesday was called for the express purpose of launching a country-wide campaign to mobilise citizens against the subversion of a core pillar of democracy, the ECI. The subtext is that the Congress and its allies have been deprived of electoral victories through the manipulation of men and machines.
Vote Theory Fails To Gain Traction
Frustratingly for the Congress, its ‘vote theory’ hasn’t found the expected public traction. So far, none of the states where the SIR has been held have witnessed protests other than those organised by political parties. The charge of a villainous conspiracy to ‘steal’ elections has not resonated with the public or even within the Congress. In fact, there are strong indications that the intra-institutional disagreements within the Election Commission of India are mirrored in the Congress Working Committee. In the CWC, as in the ECI, the leader overrode opposing views and insisted that his strategy be operationalised.
The CWC may have fallen in line and demanded the resignations of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar (and, for good measure, the Prime Minister and home minister as well), but, off the record, Congress leaders are not convinced. They fear the vote theft campaign will go the way of similar offensive strategies such as ‘chawkidar chor hai’ and ‘samvidhan bachhao’. Besides, the Congress has not been able to explain why Keralam home minister Ramesh Chennithala had praised the SIR for weeding out ‘bogus votes’ in his state. Equally confounding is the party’s inability to answer the Cockroach Janata Party’s challenge: if elections are rigged, why participate in a rigged process? Merely saying that a party does not wish to vacate the field, or that there is no consensus on the issue, is not an answer.
SIR Draws Anger Over Inconvenience
This is not to argue that citizens are sanguine vis-a-vis the SIR. In fact, many of them are furious because they have been horribly inconvenienced by flawed software, ill-conceived procedures, and overburdened BLOs. As the Bombay High Court told ECI officials, “There is something wrong with your software.” Glitches have forced citizens to queue up for hours to get their names, addresses, and identity documents verified, sometimes more than once. This unconscionable harassment has certainly dented the ECI’s image.
But the Opposition has failed to establish its accusation of partisanship, which would have given the SIR a nefarious aspect. All sections of society have suffered, cutting across the support bases of all parties. So, the narrative is not so much one of ‘vote chori’ as of ‘gadbad’ (mess) and ‘jhanjhat’ (nuisance). Ardent BJP supporters and even party leaders have gone through the hassle of getting their names back on the rolls and are twice as miffed as everyone else. The central issue is the incompetence of the ECI’s machinery and not cronyism or bias. While the SIR may be a convenient club with which to clobber the BJP at this time, public anger is typically short-lived. One year down the line, the whole campaign might amount to flogging a dead horse.
Congress Leaders Question Campaign
Small wonder veteran Congress leaders are doubtful of the efficacy of Gandhi’s campaign. It has been eight years since the issue of EVMs was first raised, but it has not created any ripples. Some critics have gone so far as to say that Gandhi’s commitment to the vote theft campaign is personal. By questioning the transparency of the electoral process, he mitigates criticism of his leadership and shifts the focus to the ruling party’s alleged shenanigans. While that evaluation may be unfair, it would not hurt Gandhi to take responsibility for setbacks rather than attribute them to a lack of support from senior leaders.
In any case, the Judiciary has declared EVMs reliable and backed the SIR by ruling that the ECI is empowered to revise the electoral rolls. Given that it would be hard to push claims of vote theft via EVMs without impugning the Supreme Court, senior leaders would prefer to leave it out of the campaign. Besides, the BJP has already pointed out the contradiction between allegations of EVM tampering and the fact that the SP and the Congress-led alliance respectively won the majority of seats in UP and Maharashtra in 2024—to which the Congress has no answer.
India Bloc Plans Public Marches
The Congress, the TMC, the RJD and the AAP have suffered severe electoral reverses since then, which they have ascribed to vote theft. However, Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav, who won handsomely in 2024, may prefer to focus on local issues ahead of the 2027 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections rather than a diffuse slogan. This might account for the SP leader absenting himself from the India bloc meeting.
The India bloc had chalked out a programme of public marches, even as a plea against the functioning of the CEC and the legality of the SIR was admitted by the Supreme Court—arguably a more appropriate forum for protesting the conduct of an independent constitutional institution than the streets.
Bhavdeep Kang is a senior journalist with 35 years of experience in working with major newspapers and magazines. She is now an independent writer and author
