Contesting the Bihar Polls? Dummy Candidates Beware

Will the real Slim Shady of the Bihar state elections please stand up?

EVMs will now have photographs of the candidates along with the party name.

If you’re contesting the Bihar elections, say cheese.

Photographs of all candidates will be placed next to their name and party symbol to prevent confusion among voters when one or more proxy candidates are raised from a single constituency.

No More Cheating By Proxy

This move denies political parties one of their favourite dirty tricks. Often, dummy candidates with names identical to a strong candidate are put up by opposition parties to confuse the voter.

The Curious Case of 11 Chandu Lal Sahus

Not that putting up a dummy candidate works, as Congress leader Ajit Jogi famously found out in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Jogi, who was facing the more-fancied Chandu Lal Sahu of the BJP in the Mahasamund constituency, contrived to put up 10 other dummy candidates - all of them bearing the name Chandu Lal Sahu.

Congress’ Ajit jogi lost the election to BJP MP Chandanlal Sahu despite 10 other Chandan Lal Sahus. (Photo: www.webkhabar.com)

Till 7 PM on counting day, Ajit Jogi was leading by 200 votes. At the end of the day though he had lost, by about 1000 votes.

Hema the actress defeated Hema the housewife by a margin of more than 3 lakh votes in the Mathura Lok Sabha election. (Photo: Twitter/@HemaMalini)

Seeta Aur Geeta

It happened to the inimitable Hema Malini too in Mathura, with two dummy candidates bearing the same name. While one of them withdrew from the contest, the other, a housewife, lost and ‘Dreamgirl’ breezed through by a massive margin of 3,30,743 against the incumbent Jayant Chaudhary, son of RLD Chief and former Union Minister Ajit Singh.

AAP’s Jarnail Singh complained to the EC about another candidate named Jarnail Singh whose election symbol was similar to the broom. (Photo: AAP website)

Torch or Broom?

Journalist Jarnail Singh, who gained notoriety for hurling a shoe at former Finance Minister P Chidambaram found himself facing two doppelgangers at the voting booth as the AAP candidate.

In this case, one of the Jarnail Singhs also had a symbol that looked suspiciously like the AAP’s broom. Singh ended up losing the 2014 general election as the candidate from West Delhi but a year later, won an Assembly seat to become an MLA.

Clearly, dummy candidates can swing elections that depend on narrow margin victories and despite several complaints, the Election Commission did not take the matter seriously. Until the Supreme Court directed it to do so.

So now the Bihar State Assembly election will be the first big election to identify candidates with a party symbol and photograph. Time for political parties to dig into their bag of dirty tricks for another dubious strategy.