EVM Charges Are Serious but They Don't Take Away Congress' Strategic Limitations

The charges may only serve to underline how the results have dealt a body blow to the self-esteem of the party.

A Congress delegation addressing the media about its EVM allegations. 

(Photo: Accessed by The Quint)

The rejection by India’s oldest party (and the second largest party in the country) of the Haryana election results after its baffling failure to oust the 10-year-old BJP administration in the state – despite both political pundits and pollsters predicting a sweep – is unprecedented.

This is the first time that such a mainstream political party in this country has raised such serious documented allegations of malfunctioning Electoral Voting Machines (EVMs) stealing an electoral victory. This appears different from the usual charges by poor losers of electoral malpractices, including that of pre-programmed EVM software.

The specific charge of electoral rigging through EVM hardware has never before been heard in this country. The Congress has alleged that there were wide discrepancies found in the battery charge of EVMs in several constituencies varying between 99 percent and below 80 percent.

A group of senior Congress leaders met senior Election Commission officials on Wednesday, 9 October, submitting a 31-page memorandum with documents showing that the BJP won in all constituencies that had EVMs with 99 percent battery charge, while the Congress won with EVMs with less than 80 percent. Details of such discrepancies in seven constituencies, including Karnal, Dabwali, Rewadi, Panipat City, Hodal (SC), Kalka and Narnaul – all lost by the Congress party – have been submitted.

However, these charges of electoral manipulation by the ruling party and the central government will not fly unless there is black-and-white proof of not just faulty but also deliberately rigged EVMs. It may only serve to underline how the results have dealt a body blow to the self-esteem of the party and its leader Rahul Gandhi.

Congress Even Let Jammu Slip Out of Grasp

The comfortable victory of the BJP facing hostile political winds both at the state and national level compared to its failure to get a majority last election under far more suitable climes must bamboozle both the Congress High Command and its local Jat head honcho Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

While the Congress snatching a defeat from the jaws of victory in Haryana has dominated the news, its abysmal showing in Jammu, where it won just one of the 30 seats it contested is no less significant. Before the poll campaign started, the Congress appeared to have the edge in the region where there was palpable discontent about the failure of delivering the Narendra Modi regime's promised benefits after the abrogation of Article 370, and about local issues like eviction drives, high property taxes and setting up of toll plazas.

Yet, the Congress let Jammu slip out of its grasp, making a hash of its ticket distribution. To put its failure in context, the National Conference, which contested 17 seats in the region, including four friendly fights with the Congress, managed to win as many as seven.

What went wrong with the Congress after the boost it received in the Lok Sabha polls?

It is clear that both in Haryana and Jammu, the party leadership, both central and local, failed at an organisational level, which has been the Achilles' heel for many years. In Haryana, much like it did in Chhattisgarh last year, Rahul Gandhi and his advisers entirely handed over poll strategy and tactics to individual local Congress bosses, blinded by media hype about their inevitable electoral triumph.

Both Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Bhupesh Baghel in Chhattisgarh are political veterans and extremely capable leaders, but putting all eggs in their individual baskets means that the Congress ran the high risk of taking other party leaders and voters for granted and has resulted in an improbable Congress defeats against all odds.

Congress' Failures

In the case of Haryana, the Congress appeared to get completely carried away by the Jat consolidation behind Hooda, its self-appointed chief ministerial candidate, which may well have sent the wrong signals to other communities across the state. Over the past decade, lacking a Jat leader of stature, the BJP had successfully forged a counter-consolidation against the Jats by most other communities who feared their dominance.

This time, the Congress egged on by journalists and pollsters, had hoped that with the Lok Dal and its late patriarch Devil Lal’s successors vastly diminished, it would get the entire Jat votes besides traditional support from other communities particularly against a government facing ten-year-old anti-incumbency and a party also troubled by in-fighting.

However, the Congress obviously failed to spot the subterranean ripples triggered across other communities by the emergence of Hooda as a larger-than-life Jat patriarch, casting aside party Dalit leaders like Selja Kumari.

It had also badly miscalculated the ability of the BJP (not complacent like during the Lok Sabha polls when it hoped to ride on Prime Minister Modi’s coattails) to work hard on the ground, reportedly supported by a hyperactive RSS. Pumped up by the predictions of media reports, exit polls, and the early trends in counting that led to premature celebrations by the Congress, the hapless party was completely dazed when the rug was pulled from under its feet.

Although the Congress will be taking cover under the brilliant performance by its senior partner in Jammu and Kashmir, the National Conference, it will know that the party had badly botched up in Jammu as well. After the exit of Ghulam Nabi Azad, the party failed to install an effective leader in the region capable of exploiting the growing disenchantment with the BJP. To make matters worse, it got caste equations horribly wrong in the Hindu-dominated plains, antagonising powerful communities like the Brahmins and the Mahajans.

Sadly, there are no easy answers to the political dilemma that the Congress party is facing.

On the one hand, it senses an opportunity as the BJP weakens across the country. On the other hand, despite Rahul Gandhi's growing popularity, it simply lacks the organisation on the ground or a support group like the RSS, deeply embedded in the community. Any number of Bharat Jodo Yatras cannot compensate for these handicaps.

(The writer is a Delhi-based senior journalist and the author of ‘Behenji: A Political Biography of Mayawati’. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)