Vote Chori: Will Bihar show the way, once again?

Let the apex court’s ruling prevail. Let Hindutva hate politics go pale!

By Ramsharan Joshi

Undoubtedly, the first battle is won, but the war is on to save electoral freedom and secular democracy in India. 

The history of the Indian judiciary shall record the day of August 14, 2025, as the victory of democracy and judicial assertion against the authoritarian behaviour of the executive. The Supreme Court, the custodian of the Constitution and rule of law, delivered its order and strongly asked the Election Commission of India (EC) to submit the list of 65 lakh (approximately)  voters whose names were removed from the list of voters in Bihar.

The order said, the deleted   names should be advertised over the media, district-wise, within 48 hours. The information will be booth-wise, and should be accessed by the EPIC (Elector’s Photo Identity Card) number.

The EC shall also disclose the reasons for non-inclusion in the draft roll. The list of excluded names of 65 lakh voters should be put on a website and prominently displayed in local newspapers in Bihar. The information shall also be broadcast on TV, Radio and other channels of publicity.

The whole purpose of the order is to make the voters aware of their voting status, and also bring out the lacunae in the process of SIR being carried out by the election commission in the state. The stand taken by the highest court of the land re-establishes the people’s dwindling trust in the judiciary and somewhat arrests the decline of democracy.

The rise of ultra-right forces poses a serious threat to the effective functioning of democratic institutions in India and across the globe. The Supreme Court’s latest order reflects a ray of hope for the survival of a liberal, capitalist, secular democracy.

Of course, political activist, Yogendra Yadav’s appearance in the Supreme Court, created a new kind of history. Yadav, appearing as an appellant, presented two living persons from Bihar before the bench of judges who were declared as dead in the electoral rolls prepared by EC. His passionately forceful pleading of his case, loaded with facts and figures, drew appreciation from the bench.

Acknowledging the live presence of ‘two dead persons’, would-be-CJI, Surkyant, made a perceptive remark: “…we are proud of our citizens that they are present in court”. 

A few minutes earlier, Rakesh Dwivedi, defending the EC, had  objected to the dramatic appearance of dead persons ‘as living beings’ in the apex court. 

In fact, there are far-reaching implications of the court’s order. The current government in Bihar, headed by Nitish Kumar in alliance with the BJP, cannot sail comfortably through the stormy weather of the assembly elections to be held in November-December this year. They are now on a sticky wicket.

The apparent debacle of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) strategy and the deletion of the so-called ‘unwanted persons’ from the electoral rolls, seemed to have been stopped for now. The EC, already under a cloud and accused widely of being consistently partisan in favour of the ruling party, has lost its credibility once again.

The unfolding events have clearly shattered the BJP’s long-cherished dream to establish its political hegemony in Bihar. It has been hoping to dump Nitish Kumar into the dustbin of history for quite some time. Now, it seems, it has wait.

Nitish Kumar’s expertise in opportunistic somersaults is well known to the political players in the state. He has rightfully earned the nickname, ‘Paltu Babu’. Moreover, the new situation created by the court order has weakened the BJP’s chances of forming a government on its own in the state. 

The setback to the ‘strategy’ of a discredited EC is bound to transgress the borders of Bihar, and affect the winning chances of the BJP in the poll-bound state of West Bengal next year.  With Mamata Banerjee going strong in both rural and urban Bengal, and a faction-ridden BJP badly weakened in the last assembly elections, the SC order will boost the TMC’s chances of returning to power yet again.

Mamata Banerjee has already expressed her objections over the implementation of SIR in West Bengal. The strong reservations raised by Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh against SIR are well known. The SC’s stand is likely to reinforce their opposition to the EC’s move for SIR.

To be precise, the unilateral edifice of invincibility built by the Gujarati-duo of Modi+Shah-brand-BJP at the Centre is posed with the possible danger of an inevitable collapse. The secretive RSS leadership, hopefully, will not keep quiet, and it is likely they might eventually make a move to dump Narendra Modi into the post-75, so-called, Margdarshak Mandal. Modi’s  Red Fort speech on Independence Day, tells a story.

More so, despite the rhetoric, his tenure as PM has been abysmal.

There is mass unemployment, relentless inflation, the stark absence of industrial growth or decisive foreign investments into the country, the alienation of farmers and the working class, and total failure in domestic policy, including in Jammu and Kashmir. Only a certain crony capitalist from Gujarat, widely known as close to the PM, has seen his empire flourish.

 Diplomatically, India’s foreign policy is in tatters, with its erstwhile clout demolished, including in the neighbourhood, where China seems to have taken over. Besides, his transparent reluctance to not even utter the ‘C’ word, has been embarrassing, even while a muscle-flexing China has allegedly intruded into the LoC in Ladakh.

On Operation Sindoor, serious questions remain unanswered (as after the Pulwama killings of our soldiers) -- why have the terrorists of Pahalgam killings not been caught; why was there no security at all in this popular tourist spot; how many Indian aircrafts were lost, were there any gains at all in this brief war, and how has Donald Trump repeatedly taken the credit for the ceasefire, while Modi remained mum? So how come a bilateral issue has been turned into an international issue by Trump, and the Indian government finds itself in a tizzy?

Rahul Gandhi’s propaganda blast of ‘Vote Chori’ has struck a chord across the nation. There is no doubt about it. More stories of electoral fraud, till now in the realm of speculation but widely believed to be true, might spill out in the days to come.

In his own constituency, Narendra Modi was trailing at one time during the parliamentary polls in 2024. Indeed, he is stated to have won by the lowest margin in electoral history, while contesting as the prime minister of the country.  

 Rahul Gandhi and the opposition have effectively mobilized public opinion, and in the social media, despite much of the mainline media playing its usual loyalist game. Their collective protest in Delhi, and their consequent detention after barricades were broken, including by women leaders of the TMC, marks a decisive point in opposition unity.

Indeed, the neutrality of EC and its bosses is in serious doubt. Doubts about the nexus, between the Modi government and the EC, has been openly voiced by the Congress and opposition parties. The message seems to have reached the masses on the ground.

The final outcome of Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Vote Theft Explosion’ will depend on how far and how effectively the opposition can expand its mass resistance. They have no other option.

If they lose Bihar now, after losing Maharashtra from a win-win situation, then it will lead to their universal fall and fragmentation, the further consolidation and rise of fanatic Hindutva and its hate politics – the total destruction of secular democracy and its already damaged institutions, and the inevitable demolarisation of the Indian voter.

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Ramsharan Joshi is an eminent journalist, author and academician based in Delhi.

Top and last picture courtesy: Facebook page of Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi.