New Delhi, India – Prince Patel canceled his holiday plans after the dates of India's week-long elections were announced. The 61-year-old retired engineer said he had waited patiently for five years to cast his vote in Surat, India's diamond hub in the western Indian state of Gujarat, “to hold my referendum against the political failures of [Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s] government”.
But when the date of May 7 arrived for the city to vote along with 92 other constituencies in the third phase of Indian elections, there was no polling booth set up in Surat.
Two weeks earlier, the Election Commission of India (ECI) had already called the seat in favor of Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after canceling the nominations of the candidate of the opposition Congress party and five others. The remaining eight candidates withdrew.
Patel said he was devastated. He had voted for the BJP in 2014, prompted by Modi's promises of “acche din” (good morning). But in 2019, disenchantment had set in. Unemployment and rising prices are some of his biggest concerns, he said, sentiments reflected in recent opinion polls.
“I would rather vote for a pigeon than elect the BJP,” he said. “My children graduated but there are no jobs.”
However, Surat is only the most extreme example of a peculiar phenomenon occurring in multiple constituencies across India: opposition candidates dropping out, joining the ruling BJP or alleging threats to their lives. Although the BJP has denied any foul play, opposition candidates claim these cases are evidence of an uneven political playing field.
“The government is your [BJP’s] and the election commission canceled several nominations on one point or the other,” said Vijay Lohar, who was a candidate for a regional party, the Bahujan Republican Socialist Party, before his nomination was rejected by election authorities. “The BJP is the referee of this game. Where should I complain?
'Demonstration of mastery'
More than 400 kilometers from Surat, the city of Indore, in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, is also preparing for what is shaping up to be, in practice, a non-contest.
Voting in the city is scheduled for May 13. But Akshay Kanti Bam, the Congress candidate, withdrew his nomination on April 29, the last date for withdrawal of candidatures, once the deadline for filing nominations had expired. In essence, that has meant that Congress cannot contest against BJP MP Shankar Lalwani, who is also the party's candidate this time around. Meanwhile, Bam also quit the Congress and joined the BJP on the eve of the elections, alleging that the party that nominated him for the constituency did not support his campaign on the ground.
The Congress Party has asked Indore voters to choose the “None of the Above”, or NOTA, option in electoral voting machines, allowing them to show displeasure with all candidates competing, even as it accuses the BJP to pressure Bam. change sides on the eve of the elections. Bam did not respond to Al Jazeera's repeated requests for an interview.
The BJP insists it has had no role in the decisions of opposition candidates who have withdrawn their nominations.
“People have walked out at their discretion and these are absolutely baseless allegations,” said BJP national spokesperson Zafar Islam. “Thousands of candidates are peacefully fighting in these elections for hundreds of seats; these allegations are only aimed at defaming the image of the BJP.”
But some analysts see a pattern in congressional districts affected by candidate withdrawals. Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh are BJP strongholds: the party won all 26 of Gujarat's seats in the Lok Sabha (the lower house of India's parliament) in 2014 and 2019. It won 27 of Madhya Pradesh's 29 seats in 2014 and improved that figure. to 28 wins in 2019.
In the eyes of the public, the withdrawal of opposition candidates from key races in these states is akin to “booth capture,” said Neelanjan Sircar, senior researcher at the New York-based Center for Policy Research (CPR). Delhi, referring to the illegal practice of taking control of a polling station during elections, which used to be common in some parts of India until a few decades ago.
“At the stand level, you capture the stand that you are strongest in, and that is done to demonstrate dominance,” Sircar said. The idea, he said, is to “give a signal to the opposition that we can win the elections whenever we want.”
And whatever the ruling party wants, if Jitendra Chauhan, a candidate who withdrew his nomination from the Gandhinagar seat in Gujarat, is to be believed.
'Threat to our lives'
Chauhan's name was supposed to be among the options in the voting machine on May 7, when Gandhinagar voted.
But the 39-year-old painter, who was running as an independent candidate, withdrew from the election against India's powerful home minister Amit Shah, whom many consider Modi's deputy.
“There has been extreme pressure on me and I have been mentally tortured to the point that I gave up,” Chauhan told Al Jazeera. He claimed that “BJP people” approached his extended family to pressure him to resign. He feared that if they managed to get to his family, they might hurt them too.
“So I backed down and withdrew my nomination,” he said.
Chauhan, a father of three daughters, posted a video on April 21, sobbing and alluding to the threat he received of consequences – including for his own life – if he did not back down. Many other candidates also withdrew from the race against Shah.
“I have a responsibility to raise my daughters,” she said, adding that she moved her daughters to a safe place on the outskirts of BJP-ruled Gujarat before returning to vote on May 7. “I am not financially rich and I cannot afford to resist the BJP because anything can happen to our lives.”
The BJP has not lost the Gandhinagar seat since 1984. In the 2019 election, Shah won the seat by a margin of 550,000 votes, and there is little evidence that he would have faced any risk of loss even if all the candidates had competed as they had. they made. he had planned to do it. But his campaign has focused on doubling Shah's margin of victory in 2019, and fewer contestants could help.
In the 2014 and 2019 elections, “there was a huge turnout for anti-corruption promises and nationalism,” but the BJP has lost that wave, said the CPR's Sircar. “The BJP is undoubtedly the most popular party in India, but we have to invent some ways to maintain these indicators of dominance,” he said.
A Gujarat-based political analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety, said these incidents pointed to gaps in India's claims to be the world's largest democracy simply because of the scale of the elections it holds. “The worst democracies also have elections; you can't eliminate elections,” they said. “But the issue is the fairness of the electoral process, and that seems compromised in India.”
It's a sentiment Chauhan echoed. He said that he had thought about participating because, as an ordinary man who had grown up poor, he felt that politics was the only vehicle for change.
“But it will always be like a hole in my heart that I was forced to withdraw,” Chauhan said, his voice breaking, as he spoke May 7 after voting. “When I voted today, I didn't feel like an independent citizen. “I felt like a subject of King Modi.”
'Future in the dark'
In India, it is rare for candidates to withdraw. An undisputed victory has only been recorded 23 times since the country gained its independence in 1947.
But for just over a decade, Indian elections have also offered the NOTA option. That is what the Congress is pressuring Indore voters to choose on May 13.
Anuj, a 60-year-old man from Indore, who wished to be identified by his first name, was first drawn to the Congress when he was driving late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's campaign jeep as a young man more than three decades ago. Since then, he has been loyal to the party, he said, and this time he has also campaigned for Congress.
“We will all vote NOTA. My party’s candidate is not there and the other option is the BJP,” she said. “It may not change anything, but he will comfort my heart for having resisted.”
Meanwhile, a group of lawyers working with civil society activists are also planning to take India's election commission to court for annulling the Surat election result without allowing people to vote in NOTA.
“Isn't NOTA seen as an independent candidate in the machine?” said one of the lawyers in a conversation with Al Jazeera, requesting anonymity, citing fears of pressure aimed at pre-empting the request.
Back in Surat, Patel, the retired engineer, was more direct about his frustration.
“They have taken away my right to vote,” he said.
