New Delhi, India – Prince Patel has canceled his holiday plans after the dates of India’s ongoing weeks-long election 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 failings of.” [Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s] Government”.
But when May 7 came, when the city was scheduled to vote along with 92 other constituencies in the third phase of India’s elections, there were no polling stations in Surat.
Two weeks earlier, the Election Commission of India (ECI) had already declared the seat in favor of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after canceling the nominations of the opposition Congress party’s candidate and five other candidates. The eight remaining candidates all withdrew.
Patel said he was devastated. He had voted for the BJP in 2014, buoyed by Modi’s promise of “acche din” (good days). But in 2019, disillusionment took hold. Unemployment and price increases are some of his biggest concerns, he said – views that reflect recent opinion polls.
“I would rather vote for a pigeon than vote for the BJP,” he said. “My kids have graduated, but there are no jobs.”
But Surat is just the most extreme example of a peculiar phenomenon that is playing out in several constituencies across India: opposition candidates are dropping out, joining the ruling BJP or claiming their lives are threatened. Although the BJP has denied any wrongdoing, opposition candidates claim these incidents are evidence of an uneven political playing field.
“The government is yours [BJP’s] “The Election Commission has canceled several nominations on one issue or the other,” said Vijay Lohar, who was the candidate of a regional party, the Bahujan Republican Socialist Party, before his nomination was rejected by the poll authorities. “The BJP is the referee of this game. Where should I complain?”
“Demonstration of Dominance”
The city of Indore, in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, more than 400 km (250 miles) miles from Surat, is also preparing for what is effectively turning out to be a non-contest.
The city’s vote is scheduled for May 13th. But Akshay Kanti Bam, the Congress candidate, withdrew his nomination on April 29, the last date for withdrawal of candidatures – after the deadline for filing nominations expired. Essentially, this means that the Congress cannot contest against incumbent BJP MP Shankar Lalwani, who is also the party’s candidate this time. Bam, meanwhile, also quit the Congress and joined the BJP on the eve of the election, saying the party that had nominated him for the constituency did not support his campaign locally.
The Congress party has urged voters in Indore to choose the ‘None of the Above’ (NOTA) option on the voting machines – allowing them to show their displeasure with all candidates contesting – even as it accuses the BJP of pressuring Bam exercise to switch sides on election night. Bam did not respond to Al Jazeera’s repeated requests for an interview.
The BJP insists it had no influence on the decisions of the opposition candidates who withdrew their nominations.
“People have retreated at their own discretion and these are absolutely baseless allegations,” said Zafar Islam, a BJP national spokesman. “Thousands of candidates are peacefully fighting for hundreds of seats in this election – these allegations are only aimed at denigrating the image of the BJP.”
But some analysts see a pattern in constituencies affected by candidate withdrawals. Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh are both bastions of the BJP: the party won all of Gujarat’s 26 seats in the Lok Sabha – the lower house of the Indian Parliament – in 2014 and 2019. In 2014, it won 27 of Madhya Pradesh’s 29 seats and improved that tally to 28 wins in 2019.
In public, the withdrawal of opposition candidates from key contests in these states amounts to a “booth takeover,” said Neelanjan Sircar, senior fellow at the Center for Policy Research (CPR) in New Delhi, referring to the illegal practice during elections to take control of a polling station, which was common in parts of India until a few decades ago.
“At one level of the locker room, you conquer the booth where you are strongest, and that is done to demonstrate dominance,” Sircar said. The idea is to “signal to the opposition that we can win elections whenever we want.”
And however the ruling party wants it, 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 expected to be among the options on the voting machine on May 7, when Gandhinagar voted.
But the 39-year-old painter, who ran as an independent candidate, withdrew from the election against powerful Indian Home Minister Amit Shah, widely seen as Modi’s deputy.
“There was extreme pressure on me and I was mentally tortured so much that I gave up,” Chauhan told Al Jazeera. He claimed that “BJP people” had approached his extended family to pressure him to quit. He feared that if they could reach his family, they could harm them too.
“So I backed down and withdrew my nomination,” he said.
Chauhan, a father of three daughters, posted a video on April 21 in which he sobbed and alluded to a threat that threatened him with consequences – including on his life – if he did not give in. Many other candidates also withdrew from the contest against Shah.
“I have a responsibility to raise my daughters,” he said, adding that he took his children to safety outside BJP-ruled Gujarat before returning to the polls on May 7. “I am not doing well financially 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 elections, Shah won the seat by a margin of 550,000 votes, and there is little evidence that he would have been at risk of losing even if all candidates had contested as they had planned. But his campaign aims to double Shah’s margin of victory in 2019, and fewer participants could help that happen.
In the 2014 and 2019 elections, “there was a booming turnout for anti-corruption promises and nationalism,” but the BJP lost that wave, the CPR’s Sircar said. “The BJP is certainly the most popular party in India, but you have to find some ways to maintain those characteristics of dominance,” he said.
A Gujarat-based political analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety, said these incidents suggest that there are holes in India’s claim to be the world’s largest democracy, simply because of the scale of elections held there. “The worst democracies also have elections – you can’t abolish elections,” they said. “But it’s about the fairness of the electoral process, and that seems to be at risk in India.”
It’s a sentiment that Chauhan echoed. He said he thought about running because, as a simple man who grew up in poverty, he believed politics was the only means of change.
“But it will always be like a hole in my heart that I was forced to withdraw,” Chauhan said, his voice cracking, speaking after the vote on May 7. “When I voted today, I did not feel like an independent citizen. I felt like a subject of King Modi.”
“Future in Darkness”
In India, a walk-through for candidates is rare. Since the country’s independence in 1947, uncontested victory has been recorded only 23 times.
But for a little over a decade, Indian elections have also offered the NOTA option. For this, the Congress is urging voters in Indore on May 13.
Anuj, a 60-year-old from Indore who asked to be identified by his first name, was first attracted to the Congress when, as a young man, he drove late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s campaign jeep more than three decades ago. Since then he has remained loyal to the party and has also campaigned for the Congress this time.
“We will all vote for NOTA. My party candidate is not there and the other option is the BJP,” he said. “It may not change anything, but it will bring comfort to my heart that I fought back.”
Meanwhile, a group of lawyers working with civil society activists are also planning to take the Election Commission of India to court for announcing the Surat election result without allowing people to vote through NOTA.
“Is NOTA not seen as an independent candidate of the machine?” Speaking to Al Jazeera, one of the lawyers said he requested anonymity, citing fear of pressure to forestall the petition.
Back in Surat, Patel, the retired engineer, expressed his frustration more clearly.
“My right to vote was taken away,” he said.