An Open Letter to the Election Commission of India from Author Vivek Pereira: Dear Election Commission of India, At the outset, let me declare that you are the most useless and ineffective government body in the history of mankind since countless Indian lives have been needlessly lost due to your ineptitude and connivance. Not only have elections in our great nation ceased to be FREE and FAIR, but they have been reduced to FARCICAL CIRCUSES in which most political parties openly seek votes on the basis of caste, religion and place of origin – a clear violation of your own model code of conduct. One wonders whether it is plain cowardice and toothlessness that prevents you from taking action in these matters, or if you are complicit in this madness? My biggest problem in this regard is with the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) which has thrived on your negligence, fear and collusion to emerge as the largest party in India. With a long history of communal hate-mongering – especially at the time of elections, and right under your very noses - The BJP has destroyed the secular fabric of the nation, and set it on a dangerous fascist path. It has failed to respect the unity of diversity which had made our nation the envy of the world. Worse still, its persistent communal agenda has created a dangerous by-product: Radical Islamic terrorism in the Indian heartland. Communalism and terrorism now enjoy a symbiotic relationship in our country, and there is a vicious circle mutually beneficial to the BJP and Islamic terrorists in which each benefits profoundly from the deeds of the other – the Godhra train burning and the subsequent Gujarat riots have made cult heroes both of Mr. Narendra Modi, the then chief minister, who is widely believed to have engineered these riots and Hafiz Saeed, the Lashkar-e-Toiba chief in Pakistan, who exploited these riots to recruit more terrorists from India and Pakistan. Everyone knows that the illegal Rath Yatra and extensive Babri Masjid demolition campaign in the late 80s and early 90s helped BJP catapult itself from the miserable state of having won just 2 Lok Sabha seats (in 1984) into becoming a national party and winning the general elections in 1998. You, the Election Commission of India, remained a mute spectator as these ‘Blood for Votes’ campaigns flourished under your watch. Even today, at election rallies, the BJP is targeting the Muslim Community with “Love Jihad” and other hate campaigns, and the Christian community with the issue of forced conversions, which again is a blatant violation of your model code of conduct - even if some of these wild allegations eventually prove to be true. You have displayed a great abundance of clemency towards the likes of Amit Shah, who openly asked voters to avenge the Hindus killed in the Muzzafarnagar riots, and Varun Gandhi who had similarly spewed venom on the minority community in speeches clearly available in video formats. The failure of the EC to act on hate speeches and venomous acts of the Sangh Parivar outfits has created an environment in which “Free and Fair Elections” have become a virtual impossibility. The recent Lok Sabha Elections is a prime example of your inefficiency, helplessness and complicity. Thousands of crores of black money were spent by political parties as financial muscle power for organizing thousands of election rallies, buying media channels, flooding social media, launching heavy advertisement campaigns on TV & newspapers and more. The amount spent by large political parties per constituency was apparently a zillion times more than the sum officially allowed per candidate but again you chose to look the other way. You allowed Modi to make a mockery of the electoral process and win the last Lok Sabha elections by every unfair means in the book. You permitted him to spend thousands of crores from questionable sources, flash the BJPs lotus symbol just outside the election booth, pose in front of Lord Rams portrait (even accepting his argument that he was not a religious figure! - Blasphemy of the highest order), abuse & accuse his political opponents unfairly, defame them in public without proof, appeal for votes on caste, communal and regional basis, stage a voter-influencing show of strength in Varanasi when filing his nomination on a day where polls took place in other states, allowed him to make a last minute speech to voters telecast on national TV during a round of elections, and so on. Many of our electoral representatives - including NDA cabinet ministers - are accused of murder, rape and other heinous crimes. In fact, some of the persons holding the highest offices in the land are those accused of mass murder, fake encounter killings, crony capitalism, big ticket corruption and more. India has changed a lot in the past few decades alone and is no longer the peaceful, secular land as it used to be in the early 1980s. People now vote out of hatred for each other rather than anything else. Hundreds have been killed at the altar of communalism and riots occur with increasing frequency and intensity due to the hate campaigns of the BJP and the Sangh Parivar. Mainstream journalists and conscientious Indian netizens are violently abused and threatened on social media and other online forum during national elections. Yes, we have paid a bitter price for your failure. It is high time that the Election Commission of India is fully revamped or disbanded (like the Pakistani ISI) and replaced by an official entity that acts swiftly against those parties and individuals who violate the electoral codes, create communal hatred and spill blood for votes. Only then can we save our great nation and ensure that all future elections in it are truly free and fair. Yours Sincerely, Vivek Pereira (The author of the bestselling novel ‘Indians in Pakistan’)
Posted on: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 12:18:03 +0000