From (Abhay), Spokesperson, Central Committee, Communist Party
India (Maoist)
The so-called largest democratic process in the world, the
elections for the sixteenth Loksabha, has been conducted in an unprecedented
manner extending over nine phases. For this, 70 lakh election officials and
millions of armed forces were deployed. Public funds amounting to tens of
thousands of crores of rupees belonging to the people of the country were spent
on this exercise. The Election Commission claimed that it was done in order to
ensure a “free, fair and impartial” election. There was great anger among the
masses against these farcical parliamentary elections. Our party CPI(Maoist)
and the national liberation movements of Kashmir and a few forces from North
East particularly in Manipur called for a boycott of these farcical elections.
It is only to suppress the growing anger of the people against these elections
that such a large number of armed forces were deployed during the elections all
over the country, and in areas of people’s struggles in particular. Elections
were conducted like a war exercise under the supervision and control of the
Indian armed forces.
The Election Commission in an unprecedented way have been
carrying out many new kinds of maneuvers to entice the people of the country to
vote and to increase the total poll percentage since the 15th Loksabha
elections of 2009, which was continued in this year’s elections too. Behind the
scene, all kinds of help were extended by the imperialist agencies to carry out
the process and by taking this help the corporate sector of the country
directly entered the electoral fray to drum-up the importance of “right to
vote”. By using the corporate media, parliamentary parties as usual made false
promises to the people.
A sort of illusion was created about the significance of
parliamentary elections and a tempo was created around it. People were
pressurized to cast their vote in areas where the masses are more critical of
the parliamentary system. It is claimed that the Election Commission has put
enormous efforts to conduct the elections successfully and has significantly
curbed money and muscle-power. Disproving such claims, all the parties
presented scamsters, gangsters and criminals as candidates before the people.
Not a single party raised and brought forth the basic problems faced by the
vast masses of the people and the country. During election campaigns, competing
parties and candidates concentrated more on attacking one another, thereby
exposing and unmasking one another’s anti-people character, reactionary and
self-seeking activities, scams and corrupt practices.
Black money, muscle-power, religion, caste, regionalism,
liquor, drugs and other enticements or coercive measures were used extensively
by all parties and candidates. For instance, more than 200 crores of cash and
over 2 crore litres of liquor were seized by the police across the country
during the elections which were meant to be distributed among the electorate.
As can be imagined, this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Corporate
media itself has revealed that more than 30,000 crore rupees were spent to
advertise and promote Narendra Modi alone. Flouting the official limit to
election expenditure of 70 lakhs per candidate with impunity, each candidate in
the fray spent an average of 8 crore rupees during this election. The farcical
nature of the so-called largest parliamentary elections of the world can be
perceived from such revealing facts.
The Congress played a most reactionary and anti-people and
treacherous role while being in power for the last ten years and aggressively
implementing pro-imperialist and pro-ruling classes’ policies in a big way. The
Congress committed all kinds of crimes against the country and its people. As a
result, its seats got reduced to less than fifty in an unprecedented manner in
this election – the worst ever electoral defeat in its entire history. By using
the people’s pent-up anger against the Congress, BJP and NDA under the
leadership of (Narendra) Modi emerged as the first ever non-Congress party to win a clear
majority in the parliament with 282 seats and together with its NDA partners
captured 334 seats out of 543. Even before the announcement of the elections, a
large number of additional paramilitary forces were deployed and the armed
forces intensified cordon-and-search operations in all the revolutionary areas
of 14 states, in areas of national liberation struggles in Kashmir and the
North East and other regions where people’s resistance movements are going on.
The first countrywide week-long (26 December 2013 to 1
January 2014) suppression campaign was carried out in 9 states with 40 thousand
additional paramilitary and state police forces. In the second suppression
campaign that lasted from 19 March to 27 March 2014, more than a hundred
thousand paramilitary troops and 6000 commandos, four Israeli spy aircrafts, a
large number of mine-proof vehicles fitted with radars, etc., were used led by
70 Inspectors General (IG) in six states where the Maoist movement is active.
These counter-revolutionary campaigns were aimed at suppressing the movement
and create a white terror among the people to conduct their ‘democratic’ elections.
In the areas of revolutionary and national liberation movements, tens of
political activists, liberation fighters and common people were murdered by
these forces.
A large number of people and political activists were
captured and tortured. They did not spare even women, children and the aged.
Villages were attacked and their residents were collectively punished through
merciless beating. Elections were conducted at gunpoint by unleashing
widespread state-terror. The statewide bandh in Kashmir called in protest
against the detention of Hurriyat Conference leaders who had given a poll
boycott call, was successfully observed on 21 April. Kashmir Valley was rife
with bandhs and protests against the atrocities and repression by the Indian
army and other state forces on the one hand and with state repression
accompanied by curfew on the other. Kashmiris fought pitched battles against
the gun-wielding army and paramilitary forces with stones by defying curfew and
other prohibitory orders.
In spite of using coercion and threat to such a large extent
and even after creating an atmosphere of terror, the polling percentage fell
far short of the 90 percent target set by the Election Commission. Only 66%
percent voters cast their vote as per official reports. The actual voting
percentage, however, would be much less if we take into account the percentage
of rigged and false votes among them. Money-power, muscle-power, the state
machinery and the armed forces were rampantly used for such electoral fraud
involving all the major parliamentary parties. Even after deploying innumerable
helicopters and aircrafts of Indian Air Force and Indian and foreign private
companies to transport election officials and material, many election booths
were shifted to police stations and paramilitary camps in areas where
revolutionary and national liberation movements are strong with the pretext
that conducting polling in those areas would be difficult. Large-scale fake
votes were cast in these booths.
Nevertheless, even 5-20 percent polling did not take place
in Dandakaranya, Bihar-Jharkhand, Odisha and Andhra-Odisha Border and other
areas where Revolutionary People’s Committees are present and the Maoist
movement is strong,. In Kashmir, even after creating state-terror prior to
elections, merely 27% polling took place as per official claims. In the context
of elections, the slogan of Azad Kashmir once again reverberated across the
valley. The ‘alternative’ of NOTA has been brought forward to deny the people
the ‘right to recall’. Due to a lack of alternative and threats from the
political parties and armed forces, more than one crore voters pressed NOTA
button. This is primarily because those who chose not to vote are often branded
as terrorists or Maoists.
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