Shifting loyalties colour India poll picture

India’s electoral politics never fails to surprise. The current bout ahead of the parliamentary elections is no exception. In fact it is already throwing up a bumper crop of surprises. Stalwarts of old parties when denied election tickets are jumping the ship for new boats and hopefuls of new outfits like Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) are no less quick to shift loyalties if denied party ticket. The final results are as clear as mud while the ruling UPA combine led by the Congress party remains the target of attacks by all and sundry. Who will be the next prime minister or which group will lead the next ruling coalition is a wide open question. Veteran Scheduled Castes leader Ram Vilas Paswan of the Lok Janshakti Party (L J P), who once quit as a minister in the BJP-led NDA coalition government over the role of Gujrat chief minister Narendra Modi in the 2001 pogrom against the Muslim minority in the state, has joined the current BJP-led alliance which is projecting the same Mr Modi as its prime ministerial candidate. He has bid good bye to his secular soulmate fomer Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav. Yoga guru Ramdev has done a double shift in less than a week by expressing anger over BJP’s failure to allot party tickets to some of his nominees across the country, especially in Gujrat where Mr Modi is the sole arbiter. He has quickly seen the light and denied any rift with Mr Modi, blaming, as usual, the press for misrepresenting his words. Old war horse and anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare, guru of Yoga guru Ramdev, Kejriwal, ex-police officer Kiran Bedi and others, has fallen out with all of his protégés and they with him. Hazare has also fallen out with one of his new admirers, West Bengal’s mercurial chief minister Mamta Banerjee and she with him over lack of supporters and empty chairs at a rally in New Delhi. The BJP, which till a few days ago seemed to be the hot favourite of pollsters and private TV channels, has had its image tarnished by wide open internal splits, though not by many total walkouts. Party president Rajnath Singh who took over Lucknow parliamentary ticket annoyed local veteran leader Lalji Tandon so much that Tandon has refused to contest from any other seat offered by the party. So has cricketer turned politician and sitting MP Navjot Singh Siddhu whose ticket has been taken over by federal leader and outsider Arun Jaitley. But the arc light which overshadowed mere spotlights has been on Mr Modi’s grab of Varanasi (Benares) seat from the party stalwart and sitting MP Murli Manohar Joshi who has been summarily shunted to fight from Kanpur. More splits can be safely expected between the time of writing and the days ahead in the run-up to the grand 2014 general election festival from April 7 to May 16 to be conducted on nine days while the election machinery moves its forces to different parts of the country during the gaps. Notwithstanding all the confusion, the federal election commission conducted a marathon one-day voter registration drive on March 7 which took its officials and public by surprise—with an overwhelming response. It was a last-ditch exercise to include those left out because of various glitches, especially of internet form filling and non-working telephones. Nearly one million counters across the country operated by men and women worked the miracle. Over 74.5 lakh (7.4 m) potential voters turned out countrywide, including 1.7 lakh in national capital Delhi, more than five times the commission’s expectation of just 30,000 in the national capital. I was one of the lucky ones to file my papers (Form 6), having failed over the net and phones several times earlier. Why did I fail in my previous half dozen attempts to get my voting right restored after a mere change of address? I had only shifted from one flat to another in the same apartment block in the same old locality of New Delhi. Was it just an occasional glitch hitting the net and the telephone services? No. Going by the experience at offices like that of the Delhi Development Authority and others, one may not be far wrong in saying that our brand of e-governance is suffering from an epidemic of glitches. And it is not the fault of technology, nor is it the fault of our stars. The fault , dear Brutus, lies in our selves. Nor is it particular to India alone. Other countries too have faced similar glitches at the start of their experiments with net technology and over-dependence on answer-phone machines. I am reminded of the British experiment which I happened to share not too long ago. They have overcome the problem by putting a human face or voice at the end of the line, in case the customer fails after three or four dialling or clicking options. We can do it too and make a success of our e-governance. Congratulations to the Election Commission for putting men and women on duty instead of solely depending on internet and telephone networks in the run-up to the world’s largest election exercise covering nearly 820 million voters, more than the combined population of European Union and the USA. ................................................................................................................................................................