Yesterday, Election Commission of India (ECI) announced the dates of General Election 2019. The polls will be held in 7 phases, starting from April 11 and the seventh phase taking place on May 19.
May 23, 2019, is the big counting day.
(Courtesy: Star of Mysore)1st phase - April 11
2nd phase - April 18
3rd phase - April 23
4th phase - April 29
5th phase - May 6
6th phase - May 12
7th phase - May 19
Counting - May 23
Now, following the announcement of the dates, it wasn't surprising to see a few political parties take objections to it.
Founder of Swaraj Abhiyan and social activist Yogendra Yadav put forth some legit questions:
· Why Odhisa in 4 phases, when AP/Tel in 1 phase?
· Why extend West Bengal in 7 phases
· Why decouple assembly and Lok Sabha polls in Jammu and Kashmir?
And some more…
While Yogendra Yadav managed to maintain his intellect ingenuity, there were a few leaders from other parties who went an extra mile or two to actually accuse the Election Commission of India.
(Courtesy: Dbpost.com)TMC leader Firhad Hakim, as well as Amanatullah Khan of AAP, said that the BJP doesn’t want minorities to vote; this is why some phases of the election are taking place during the Holy Month of Ramzan. In a way, they are basically implying that ECI is working alongside the ruling party BJP.
Of course, these two aren’t alone to toss this communal charged narrative. Assumingly, there are plenty more relatively less-known politicians from national and regional parties who would sing to the same tune. After all, it isn’t the big political names who trigger the communal tension -- it is the smaller ones who act as their puppet in pulling such propaganda.
Now coming to this accusation itself -- how fitting is it?
Is ECI really siding with BJP? Does BJP really not want the minorities to vote in General Election 2019?
There are different dynamics to these questions.
Foremost, with all that has panned out in recent years, during the state elections, in particular, ECI hasn’t done much in proving its independence. The accusations include rigged EVMs, going lenient with BJP leaders, and more. So much so is ECI in hot waters, last year, a group of former Chief Election Commissioners (CECs) held a meeting to discuss all that's going wrong with the commission.
Second, minorities, indeed, are still skeptical voting for BJP. Sure, the Hindutva party touts decent support of Muslim voters. It still lags by a big margin when looked at it from the macro scale. So, it WON'T be a crazy idea to suggest that BJP does not want the Muslims to vote in large numbers in General Election 2019. So, holding the polls during Ramzan could be a part of its election strategy.
Third, let's not presume that Muslim voters would not head to the polling booths just because it's Ramzan. That would have been the case years back. But today, with so much awareness, the turnout could still be big.
(Courtesy: The Hindu)I personally do not believe in such conspiracy theories -- ones, in particular, that carry an evident agenda of triggering Muslim voters against the ruling party. The opposition leaders who are picking this issue, it's not hard to identify their real intent.
So, I think no one should really pay heed to such theories.
Besides, there's virtually no point of doing that. No matter how doubtful the role of Election Commission of India looks throughout, it would still be called "independent". And the people who are objecting its independence, they will be labeled as, well, anti-nationals.
In addition, with the election dates now announced, this is just the beginning on political parties' end to pan out their political agendas on the lines of caste and religion. A lot more is to come.