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The 13th Lok Sabha
elections were held in five phases spanning almost a month. The reason : the
need to provide security for conducting a "free and fair" poll. By giving a
week’s gap between one phase of polling and another, the Election Commission
sought to shift the armed forces from one region to another.
The polling booths
which were categorised into sensitive, super sensitive and hyper-sensitive were
spread across the length and breadth of the country and cover all the areas of
intense class struggles and nationality struggles, communally sensitive areas
and areas where the ruling class sections are engaged in intense dog-fights.
The polling in
several states was divided in such a way that the maximum armed forces could be
deployed in the areas of class struggle and nationality struggle. The elections
in the state of Bihar with 54 seats was divided into three phases. The elections
in areas of armed struggle in AP were divided into two phases on September 11
and 18 while the election in the adjoining areas in MP which is part of
Dandakaranya were held on September 25. The elections in a smaller state like
Kashmir with just six parliamentary seats was also divided into two phases which
ultimately became three as Anantanag had to go for elections on the day after
the last phase, on October 4, due to the killing of the BJP candidate by the
Kashmiri nationalists; the polling for the North East was held on September 25.
Thus care was taken to move the maximum number of state’s armed forces to the
areas of struggle to foil the call for poll boycott given by the various
organisations leading the class struggle and nationality struggle.
As usual, the armed
forces were deployed in great numbers to see that a larger percentage of polling
takes place in Kashmir, the North East and the areas where people’s war is
raging particularly in AP, Bihar and Dandakaranya. Large-scale violence was
unleashed on the polling days in these areas.
For instance, in
Kashmir, the security forces fanned out into the countryside threatening people
that they should vote and even pulling them out of their houses and driving them
to the polling booths. A BBC correspondent reported both on September 18 and
October 4, that he had seen people being herded together by the armed forces and
forcibly taken to the booths in some villages.
In Haigam village, a
17-year old boy was killed when the armed forces opened fire on the people who
refused to vote. In Shilwat village in Sonwari Assembly segment of Baramulla
parliamentary constituency, three people were killed by these state-hired
uniformed mercenaries enraged by the people’s refusal to vote.
In spite of these
terror tactics by the Indian state, the turnout in the Kashmir valley was very
low. It was just 13.8 per cent in the Anantanag constituency and even less in
the Baramulla constituency. The Sangrama Assembly segment of Baramulla recorded
the lowest of 2.5 per cent and Sopore 5 per cent. The Pampore Assembly segment
recorded the lowest of 0.9 per cent in the Anantanag constituency. Not a single
vote was polled in about 180 polling stations in Kashmir as a whole. The call
for a general strike (Bandh) by the All Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC) evoked
total response both on September 18 and October 4 paralysing normal life in the
Kashmir valley. The APHC leaders told the reporters that "once again the
people of Kashmir had shown to the world that they were not interested in a
farcical exercise like this." All the leaders of the All Party Hurriyat
Conference (APHC) were placed behind bars during the election period.
In North Telangana,
and other areas of intense class struggle in AP and Dandakaranya, a terror
campaign was let loose by the police two months prior to the election day as
reported in the last issue of People’s March. Thousands were
arrested and kept in police custody for days; the activists in the villages were
used as a human shield for the movements of the armed forces and for
transferring the ballot boxes. In the villages known to be strongholds of the
revolutionaries, the police selected some militants and forced them to cast
their votes first to be followed by the others in the village. The pressure was
particularly more in the villages of the movement’s leaders such as Beerpur of
Comrade Ganapathy to show to the world that the PW had no support among the
masses. No wonder, the polling percentage was astoundingly high in these
villages.
Police ‘durbars’ were
held in most of the villages inspite of an earlier order by the AP High Court
not to do so. Rallies were organised in the Mandal centres with former
supporters of PW who were on police records for over a decade or so. They were
also assured that their names would be removed from police records if they
organised the polling successfully in their villages. In Warangal district alone
about 3000 supporters of PW were mended up and forced to organise the people to
vote. Each booth in the PW strongholds was guarded by 10-30 of the former
activists who were threatened that they would be killed if the ballot boxes were
carried away by PW activists. The harassment fo these activists was so much that
even the generally mild Human Rights Commission issued a statement demanding
that the police stop such acts immediately.
In spite of the
strong-arm tactics by the state’s forces, the resistance by the people led by
the revolutionaries on the one hand and the nationalist organisations on the
other has been quite considerable this time.
A total of 83 police
and para-military personnel were killed in ambushes and land-mine explosions;
three candidates were killed one each in Kashmir, Assam and AP; hundreds of arms
were seized and polling disrupted in several places.
More important, the
poll boycott slogan became even more popular and widespread this time. Voter
turn-out was lower by 3 per cent when compared to the last general election;
there was general apathy and no ‘wave’ of any sort. Even in the capital city of
India, where the BJP won all the 7 seats, the turn-out was as low as 43 per
cent. In Lucknow, the constituency of the Prime Minister, 18,000 voters
responded to the call given by the Chunav Bahiskaar Samiti (Boycott Election
Committee) and only 200 out of the 5000 voters in Mohana town cast their votes.
It is clear that poll boycott will become an important form of struggle
throughout the country in future notwithstanding the massive deployment of the
armed forces and the coercive tactics of the ruling classes.
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