Modi’s Coronavirus Mismanagement Had No Effect on Bihar Election
The coronavirus factor was not seen in the Bihar election, because opposition leaders complain of election fraud that helped Modi’s party win.
By Rakesh Raman
Despite PM Narendra Modi’s failure to contain coronavirus in the country, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has won the Bihar Assembly election.
Bihar is one of the worst-affected states where the health care system has completely collapsed and hundreds of thousands of migrant workers came back to the state from other locations, as the Modi government failed to provide them livelihood.
Still the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won the Bihar election with 125 of the 243 Assembly seats and will continue to hold power in the state. As most elections in India are held in a dubious manner where voters are bribed or the voting machines are manipulated, reports reveal that large-scale election fraud happened in Bihar.
Pushpam Priya Choudhary – a self-styled chief ministerial (CM) candidate in the just concluded Bihar election – has claimed that the electronic voting machines (EVMs) were hacked by the ruling party to change the result in its favor. She has accused Modi’s BJP of election rigging by tampering with the EVMs.
Although the president of The Plurals party Ms. Choudhary who lost the election could not provide any evidence of EVM hacking, she asserted in a series of tweets on November 10 that her party’s votes were stolen.
“BJP rigged the election. Plurals votes transferred to NDA on all booths. See booth-wise data, Plurals votes stolen!” she tweeted frantically, claiming that she has got zero votes even at those election booths where her party workers voted for her in her presence.
Similarly, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav on November 12 demanded recounting of postal ballot votes. He questioned the vote counting process and said the mandate of people was in favour of his party’s alliance but the Election Commission’s result was in NDA’s favour.
Many observers believe that Modi government has completely failed during the past 6 years of its rule in the country, as unemployment is increasing rapidly, economic activity is almost dead, coronavirus is killing hundreds of thousands of people, corruption has increased exponentially, and India is facing a situation of civil unrest.
But Modi still wins elections because the election process is not fair. As Modi is an uneducated religious demagogue who cannot use intellect to solve any problem, he is delivering only shallow slogans to give a false impression that everything is fine in the country.
And when elections come, his party uses deceitful means to win elections fraudulently, as people are complaining about election fraud in Bihar. Since most opposition politicians in India are weak and uneducated, they raise only feeble objections against the dubious election results. But finally they accept the results, and Modi’s BJP keeps controlling the power.
At present, even with under-reported figures, India has nearly 9 million coronavirus cases which are increasing rapidly and soon India will cross the U.S. numbers to reach the No. 1 spot.
By Rakesh Raman, who is a national award-winning journalist and social activist. He is the founder of a humanitarian organization RMN Foundation which is working in diverse areas to help the disadvantaged and distressed people in the society.
