While Arvind Kejriwal is blaming EVMs for massive defeat in Goa and in Punjab elections, other people are blaming Kejriwal himself for pushing Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to such state. One such person is Mayank Gandhi, who now believes that the quest for alternative politics through AAP is over.
Mayank Gandhi first came into contact with the current AAP leadership when he became part of the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement spearheaded by Anna Hazare. He later joined the newly formed Aam Aadmi party and became its national executive member and leader of the party’s Maharashtra state unit.
However, his association with the party was cut short after the AAP’s central leadership disbanded its Maharashtra unit, which reportedly had failed to act against Gandhi who had openly fallen out with Kejriwal over his decision to expel Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav.
Recently after the defeat of the party in Goa and Punjab, Mayank Gandhi wrote an open letter addressed to the volunteers about how AAP had betrayed all the principles it once stood for and how sad he was when he sees it all:
Hv quit politics, but feeling emotional today.After reading,u may call me names but plz think deep about your lifehttps://t.co/kAxzzxPREz
The letter written on his personal blog, with a tinge of disappointment, announced that the quest for alternate politics was over. He asked the volunteers to rather go back to whatever they were doing in their personal lives, than continuing to dream about some change through AAP.
In the letter Mr. Gandhi talked about how the once high support for the party in the streets of Delhi has now turned into complete anger. He also talked about the hype the party creates on Social Media, and cautioned that the party’s performance in upcoming Gujarat assembly elections too might go the Goa way, where the party lost security deposits in 39 out of 40 seats.
According to the former AAP leader, the only chance the party has to stay relevant is by governing Delhi properly and not by making tall claims about their governance based on improving some schools and setting up some Mohalla clinics. However, he said that the party was reduced to making Arvind Kejriwal the Prime Minister.
The letter claims that AAP, which was formed on anti-corruption plank, has now become almost as corrupt as other parties. Mr. Gandhi claimed that most of the Delhi MLAs had become equally, if not more, corrupt than the MLAs of the previous government.
Apart from corruption, the letter also highlights how AAP has become like any other party doing caste and communal politics. The letter makes explosive claims like seats being sold in Punjab, cash being taken in large amount, donation list being removed, no income-expenditure data being given for the last 3 years – all of which hint at how the party has lost its moral high ground and was neck deep into corruption.
Mayank Gandhi also talked about his personal sacrifice of quitting his high paying job to join the movement and how he felt betrayed by what the party had become. He felt especially sorry about all the idealists and patriots who were or are associated with the party and with a heavy heart spoke about how they all have been taken for a ride.
Even on Twitter, though he isn’t associated with AAP, he personally apologized to actor Ranvir Shorey who was attacked by the party supporters for asking tough questions against the party.
He used to sit on floor during Aap mtgs. Ranvir, on behalf of my ex- colleagues, I apologise. They are young and misguided. Forgive them. https://t.co/z7VdORvoNA
Though after quitting politics Mayank Gandhi hasn’t been sitting idle. As mentioned in the letter, he has been carrying out social initiatives like adopting 15 villages in the drought prone Parli tehsil in Marathwada for a 360 degree development of the villages to spur in the rural rejuvenation of the area. To further the initiative he has formed the Global Parli organisation.
The Quint, the online publishing house has made a reputation for itself when it comes to indulging in dubious and dangerous forms of journalism. During the episode of demonetisation, Raghav Bahl, the founder of The Quint, had written two articles. One made legendary fantasy writers like George RR Martin and J.R.R Tolkien proud, and the other made legendary spinners like Bishan Singh Bedi and Anil Kumble proud.
The Quint then sunk to a new low after after one of its reporters decided to create a sham of a sting operation which ended in the death of an Army Jawan. The publication has been accused of not doing enough to protect his identity.
One might wonder that after such a downhill journey, when it comes to maintaining the ethics of journalism, it won’t be humanly possible for any publication to sink any lower. But as it turns out we are in for a surprise as it has managed to do just that.
The publication has now given platform to a person who prefers political assassinations to create history. The person is someone called Vikas Malhotra, who wished a sniper to kill Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he was campaigning in Varanasi. This is what he had tweeted:
The original tweet has been deleted. Screenshot thanks to this tweet.
It does raise the question as to how and why did The Quint decide to provide him their platform. One reason might be that the fact-checking department (that failed to verify Bahl’s two articles) failed to notice Malhotra’s tweet. Or that they did notice but the surprising lack of morality in the publication (which heartlessly didn’t show any remorse for leading a Jawan to his death) ensured that they completely disregarded the tweet.
People were understandably angered both by the tweet and by the fact that such hateful people get to masquerade as independent and neutral writers on media platforms:
It is worth mentioning that recently a writer asking for assassination of Donald Trump had gotten her writing contract terminated. It remains to be seen if The Quint too announces that they would not publish anything written by Malhotra in the future.
Also this isn’t the first time an Indian journalist or a blogger has openly tweeted his wish for the PM’s assassination. This January, a Times Now journalist by the name of Prashant Kumar had put out a tweet hinting the same. He too could save his job just by deleting the tweet.
UPDATE: The Quint has terminated the association with Malhotra and deleted his articles from their platform.
We condemn Vikas Malhotra’s objectionable tweet. He is not an employee of @TheQuint. All his blogs have been deleted and discontinued. https://t.co/zv1MrlQ8Ln
The Goa Congress, led by their central leader Digvijay Singh, made a hue and cry over the formation of the BJP led Government in Goa. They even went to the Supreme Court to stall the process but in turn were rapped hard by the apex court. The Court advanced the date of the trust vote, thereby leaving Congress with little time to convince regional parties to jump ship.
The trust vote took place yesterday and the BJP led Government won by 22 votes to 16 votes, in a 40 member assembly. One vote belonged to the speaker, which would take the BJP’s tally to 23. Still, one vote was missing. The Congress which had 17 elected MLAs, could manage only 16 votes, because at the last moment, in spite of signing the party whip, MLA Vishwajeet Rane disappeared.
Congress Legislative Party leader Chandrakant Kavlekar tried to put up a brave face, but ended up making a mockery of things:
Later it was reported that Rane had quit the party. The larger reason for Rane quitting the party is obviously the fact that the Congress, despite being the single largest party, could not cobble up a Government. He had earlier blamed the central leaders like Digvijay Singh for this failure of the Congress party.
But if one were to see his statements as reported by the local press today, one may find out the exact straw which broke the camel’s back. According to reports in local media, Vishwajeet Rane claims to have taken the decision to abstain from voting because of a particular statement by Digvijay Singh:
With dissent in the party increasing prior to the trust vote, Digvijay Singh, instead of being on the back-foot and placating ruffled feathers, had stated that Viswajeet Rane had met up with Parrikar over coffee, and hence he was speaking against the party. Rane claims, this statement hurt him, which is why he chose to abstain from voting, defying the party whip. This action made him eligible for disqualification, but since he himself resigned, any proceedings against him will be irrelevant.
Whether Rane met up with Parrikar is open to discussion, but this episode brings to fore the utter mismanagement of Digvijay Singh. At a time when his party is low on morale, has been out-foxed by the BJP, and is rumoured to be heading for a split, instead of consolidating the divided opinions, Digvijay chose to further increase the animosity. A leader is expected to maturely respond to his own MLAs who are unhappy, instead Singh chose to slug it out in public.
Further, Rane is no ordinary turn-coat Congress MLA. He is a former Congress Minister and most importantly son of a the senior most Congress MLA and former CM Pratapsingh Rane. Alleging that such a staunchly Congress leader, is hand in glove with the BJP, was a very petulant statement by Digvijay. That too when the MLA had not yet quit.
The result is there for all to see. In a huge embarrassment to the Congress, far from luring others to join them, the Goa Congress could not even manage to keep its own flock intact. The Congress is now down to 16 MLAs and if rumours are to be believed, the exodus has just begun.
Controversial journalist Sagarika Ghose who currently works for The Times Of India seems to have almost developed a habit for getting into needless controversies. During the recent political fiasco in Tamil Nadu she had written a cringe-worthy article stereotyping South India under the facade of humour for which she was heavily panned. Today, she got panned again.
Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala notified the press that the Congress VP Rahul Gandhi would be accompanying his mother Sonia Gandhi abroad for her medical checkup.
Sonia Gandhi is travelling abroad for health check-up.Rahul Gandhi shall travel there&accompany her on the return journey: Randeep Surjewala pic.twitter.com/kmEPGC8Im0
Even though the tweet amply stated that he was traveling with his mother on serious business, it didn’t stop Sagarika Ghose from attempted her infamous humor:
It is common knowledge that one of the most recurring jokes on Rahul Gandhi are based on his frequent foreign travels but Sagarika clearly didn’t display enough understanding to realise that this time, the prince was attending to a personal pressing matter, like every son should.
This understandably drew the ire of Congressies and their political allies:
That’s a low blow. His mother isn’t well & he’s flying out to accompany her back. Catch him on a beach or at a party & then take this dig. https://t.co/GSu3AFDpYr
He should abandon his ill mother? All sacrifices expected from his family only? Forgot that he lost his father &grandmother for this nation? https://t.co/qkh5PkAsuw
Absolutely not. Not the case in any part of the world. Politicians are not superhuman & not all politicians with families are crooks! https://t.co/mkuMteSeQs
Not surprisingly even Journalists lashed at Sagarika for her misfired joke:
He keeps travelling for undisclosed vacations all the time. To mock him then maybe okay. But when someone’s ill, it’s distasteful trolling! https://t.co/1emjoieDkw
Also as a touching gesture the Right Wingers who are on any day opposed to Rahul Gandhi and mock his policies, condemned her tweet, thereby furthering the idea that differences should always run skin deep and not get personal:
Being with one’s mom is not having a break. Mock him when he goes on vacation not now https://t.co/iSmCzlbFsh
In today’s digital era, Twitter has become a revolutionary space where every individual can publicly express his feelings in certain limited characters. But, nowadays, seeing its huge dominance in public life, sometimes it turns into a platform for ugly combats among public figures. Trolling has become a general phenomenon over here and even the celebrities are also not untouched with this.
It has also become a platform where anyone slightly stronger with facts or good at sarcasm leaves no opportunity to ridicule and denigrate others, more particularly his or her political opponents. One such man is Mr. Kumar Vishvas, the confused right-leaning leader of a left-inclined political party.
He leaves no opportunity to publicly humiliate his opponents when he is slightly stronger with facts, and when he is not, through his cheap sarcasm and ill-logic. Recently, he had tried to troll the Union Minister of State Kiren Rijiju. He often trolls the storyteller Chetan Bhagat as well. There are many more in the list to add, who more often, get trolled by him. He is a master of his own class, the cheap sarcasm.
Mr. Kumar Vishvas is also infamous for being blatantly disrespectful towards women and the history of his public life endorses this fact. His infamous sexist and racist jibes on Kerala’s nurses is not a hidden secret. During election campaigns in Amethi, he had ridiculed Smirti Irani by calling her “Irani or Pakistani”. Not only that, on several occasions, he has been spotted mocking women on stages in the Kavi Sammelan he attends.
In one of his recent despicable Twitter trolling instances, he went on to term Shilpi Tewari as an illiterate Modi fan, because she had incorrectly mentioned late poet Shiv Mangal Singh Suman’s poem as Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s poem. However, she had corrected herself even before Dr. Vishvas could notice it and attempt to mock her.
But as I said, he leaves no opportunity to ridicule someone, so he was not willing to give up this opportunity either, of trolling a woman because nature and signature never change. To remind the readers, Shilpi Tewari is the same woman who was in news last month after Prime Minister Modi delivered her a package of stole she requested for on Twitter, which Mr. Modi had draped in the inaugural ceremony of unveiling the 112ft. tall statute of Lord Shiva, in Coimbatore, organized by Isha foundation.
In this tweet, Mr. Vishvas mockingly addressed Shilpi as ‘Devi’ and termed Modi fans as illiterates. He even tried to drag Smirti Irani by inventing a term “Yale-buddhi” that hints at her degree controversy. However, he immediately got the taste of his own medicine when some of the netizens were quick to remind him of his own mistake in properly writing the Hindi word ‘Devi’ on Twitter.
Apart from Mr. Vishvas being a troll, the context and the manner in which he used the word ‘Devi’ in a ridiculing tone, is itself highly deplorable and sacrilegious. He claims himself to be an ardent follower of Hinduism philosophy and then uses the word ‘Devi’ to mock a woman, apart from using ‘Bhakts’ – a term that was always proudly used by religious Hindus to describe their relationship with their gods and goddesses – in a derogatory manner. His “respect” for Hindu traditions and beliefs becomes obvious here.
However, let’s go back to his original point. Where he thought Shilpi Tewari was worthy of ridicule because she got a poet’s name wrong. If that makes her illiterate, Vishvas too is illiterate. Let me explain.
This is a story of when I was a staunch AAP supporter. My infatuation for AAP and Arvind Kejriwal’s politics had crossed all limits, so much so, that I had undertaken a resolve that if AAP comes to power in Delhi, I shall visit the sanctum sanctorum of Maan Vaishno Devi shrine in Jammu, and I actually did that when it secured 67 out of 70 seats in 2015 Delhi elections.
This was also the time when I fell in love with the oratory of Mr. Kumar Vishvas. I used to keep a separate folder in my laptop containing his speeches and poems after downloading them from YouTube.
Let me frankly admit that I still like some of his poems and more often listen these and still have great respect for his art and poetry, but it is equally true that now I equally hate his style of politics, as he is equally responsible in betraying the nation, similar to that of Arvind Kejriwal.
He used to say that after coming to power if AAP doesn’t pass Janlokpal Bill, he will be the first person to publicly denounce Kejriwal and shall sit on hunger strike against him. But the fact remains that after Kejriwal introduced a diluted Janlokpal Bill, he did nothing. This disappointed me too much.
Also, when Kejriwal’s team and his hired hooligans shamelessly misbehaved with Prashant Bhushan and the other dissenters in the infamous NC meet of AAP on March 28, 2015, Mr. Kumar Vishvas chose the abusers’ side and defended the hooligans. In fact, I was strongly amazed at his conscience allowing him to take the side and defend a person who had literally abused Mr. Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav and other dissenters in such a foul language which can’t be reproduced here, for the sake of decency.
I got excessively hurt over these unexpected blatant betrayals of Mr. Vishvas and I decided to no longer admire him at all in politics.
I am sorry that I diverted from the story I was going to share but this divergence was important as all these pieces of information are essential prologue to the story I am going to narrate. This story belongs to the same phase in my life when I was an ardent admirer of Mr. Vishvas.
One evening, I was sitting with my father and uncle, watching Mr. Vishvas’s interview on ‘India TV Public meeting show’. I must admit here that my entire family members are staunch BJP supporters, more particularly my father who has spent his whole life serving to the ideology of BJP and RSS, but I am not that much of a BJP supporter because for me BJP is more like a compulsion, the least evils among all the evils.
So, during this interview, I got little amazed when a poet of Mr. Vishvas’s stature wrongly quoted a poem of Maithili Sharan Gupta by claiming it to be a poem of Ramdhari Singh Dinkar. I thought this kind of mistake happens in public life and ignored it. But after few days I again observed him committing the same mistake in a TV interview with Dipak Chaurasia on ‘India News’.
Truly speaking, I turned little fearful, as I thought that if the mainstream media observes this mistake, they may make a mountain out of this molehill, and the election campaigns of AAP may get affected. Therefore, I decided to send him an email requesting him to correct his mistakes onwards.
Finally, I sent him an email dated, February 1, 2015 at 6:30 PM, titled, “You are repeating the mistake. Please correct it.” Such was my respect for him that time that I started my email to him by writing ‘Most Respected Sir’. To my great surprise, he responded within 4 minutes at 6:34 PM, and his exact response was “thank dear. Will correct. Regards. – Kumar”.
My email to Kumar Vishvas (left) and his reply (right)
I was indeed over the moon the moment as I had received a response from someone I used to admire so much. I was showing off this response to my friends to share my happiness. After some days, Mr. Vishvas was invited to Rajat Sharma’s famous show ‘AAP ki Adalat’ where in response to the very first question asked by Rajat Sharma, he again mentioned that poem to advance his arguments but this time, taking my advice into considerations, he had corrected himself, though he didn’t mention that he had corrected himself after I had corrected him.
I have compiled the relevant shots in all these three interviews of Kumar Vishvas to make it a short video of less than 4 minutes, with the help of my friend, where Mr. Vishvas can be seen making illiterate remarks as per his own logic and language.
Today, when a Modi-fan makes a similar mistake then he calls her an illiterate, not only her, he goes on to call the entire Modi-fans as illiterate. I wish to understand from him if he is an illiterate or not as per his own logic and language?
Not only this, in his same ‘India TV Public Meeting Interview’ he had claimed that, “I may not agree with what you say, but I shall defend till death your right to say it” is a quote by the famous French philosopher Voltaire, whereas the fact of the matter is that this quote is not that of Voltaire. It was originally quoted in the book ‘The Friends of Voltaire’ written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall and it is often wrongly attributed to Voltaire’s himself.
This concludes, using his own logic, that Dr. Kumar Vishvas is more illiterate than Shilpi Tewari.
And yes, in the same breath in the same interview, he was miserably whining about how Kiran Bedi had undemocratically blocked him on Twitter, but the fact of the matter that when I had commented on his Facebook questioning his silence over ‘Janlokpal Bill’ he immediately blocked me.
You lost an admirer Mr. Visvas, and you have lost the moral high ground to call anyone illiterate.
(written by Rohit Kumar, School of Law, KIIT University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha)
I gaped at the screen in horror. The Prime Minister was addressing the nation – an unscheduled talk announced just 30 minutes back.
It was ten minutes into the speech and my despair grew with every word he uttered. On the screen, he adjusted the mics and hiked his sleeves for the nth time, shuffled through his written speech and, unable to find what he was looking for, gave a dimpled smile to someone off screen. A hand appeared and passed on a sheet of paper to him. He looked at it, adjusted his mics and continued.
“From midnight tonight, we are abolishing hunger and poverty in this country. My government has pledged to work for the poor, the minorities and the backwards. And tonight we are fulfilling this promise.”
He shuffled his sheets again and, without any details of how he intended to achieve this, went on, “My next scheme is Bake in India. When Mrs. George Bush goes to buy a cake for her son’s birthday, she will see lovely cakes and ask, “Where are they from?” She will be told they are from Supreme Bakery in Sector 8 Market RK Puram New Delhi. I want to see cakes from every bakery of India in US markets, European markets. Let them eat cake.”
He went on for 30 more minutes, announcing scheme after scheme. The RaGa Gujarat Mahila Dugdh Yojna. The RaGa Dalit Escape Velocity Yojana. The RaGa Coconut Juice Promotion Scheme. The talking heads were already waiting, champing at the bit in the television studios, and the cacophony began the moment the speech ended.
“We heard the PM, but the nation wants to know, what is the implementation plan?” the anchor yelled, directing his question to the family loyalist spokesman of the ruling party. “I will answer if you allow me to speak.” The anchor nodded, and the spokesman continued, “Ours is a 150 years old party and we have given sacrifices for the independence. One family has given sacrifice after Independence als…”
“Yes, but what has that got to do with implementation?” shouted the anchor. “We want to know what’s the roadmap for…” The spokesman yelled louder than the anchor, “You can’t shout me down. We represent the poor, downtrodden, minorities. You’re suppressing the voice of….”
The shouting got louder and louder. I woke up with a start, realized that I had fallen asleep listening to the election speech of the Congress party vice-president. I shuddered remembering my nightmare. Thank God voters have better sense, I consoled myself and switched to ‘2 Broke Girls’ on Star World.
“There was no fatwa” – some people in the media and on the social media are on an overdrive repeating the same ever since the news of a “fatwa” against the 16-year-old singer Nahid Afreen was published by various media organisations.
OpIndia.com too curated the report after various publications confirmed it. However, since we always take media reports with a pinch of salt, we started to wonder if it was a “media lie” (our most popular offering) once the claims of “there was no fatwa” started doing the rounds.
The source of “there was no fatwa” claim was a report by the leftist propaganda blog Scroll. Despite it being a propaganda blog, we decided to take a look at the source. This is what we found:
(all the “facts” below are from the Scroll article, except the last bit, where the source has been linked back)
The Scroll report, if taken on face value, essentially claims that there was no fatwa as is defined by Islamic jurisprudence. There was basically a leaflet signed by various Muslim leaders, including clerics, that objected to a musical night at a college campus, because there was a mosque and graveyard near the campus.
Nahid was not directly mentioned in the leaflet, but Nahid is to perform at that musical night, which is slated to take place on March 25. The leaflet reiterates that such musical performances were “against sharia” and they could invite “wrath of Allah” on future generations.
Later the article quotes Nahid herself, who confirms that some local clerics had been against her singing, calling it a gunaah (crime) and “against sharia”.
(Note: Despite Nahid herself revealing this, Scroll makes a headline that virtually shields these clerics from criticism. Scroll report quotes secretary of Assam State Jamiat Ulama claiming that the Muslim community was proud of Nahid, but the report concedes, based on Nahid’s statement, that Ulama might not be truthful.)
Nahid further revealed that these clerics had even campaigned against her in 2015, when people were being asked to vote for her during the singing reality show Indian Idol Junior, where she finally ended up being the runner up. The then Assam Chief Minister had publicly appealed to people to vote for Nahid in the show.
To summarise (we are using the term “mullahs” as per general parlance):
Mullahs consider musical nights “against sharia”. They have put it on a leaflet.
Mullahs consider Nahid’s singing being “against sharia”.
Mullahs think that such acts “against sharia” will attract “wrath of Allah”.
Mullahs have asked people to boycott an event where Nahid incidentally performs.
Now with these facts on table, what is the priority of so-called “moderate” and “secular” voices? Their primary concern is not that Muslim leaders and clerics are trying to impose sharia laws in parts of India, but whether a leaflet can be called “fatwa” or not!
There is a show called “Fatah ka Fatwa” on Zee News, hosted by noted Islamic critic and author Tarek Fatah, where he attacks beliefs of radical Islam and activities of such mullahs. Many mullahs are against the show and want it fold up. One of the objections is that the show uses the term “fatwa” casually, because Tarek Fatah is not someone who can issue a fatwa, as defined by Islamic jurisprudence.
The stand that the leftist propaganda blog Scroll has taken is similar to the above position. They have focused on the “technicalities” instead of focusing on the “nuances”, which they insist on other occasions. For them, the use of term “fatwa” must be according to Islamic jurisprudence, not according to general parlance.
Further, we had recently seen the same lot outraged over “technicalities” such as whether Rohith Vemula had a genuine caste certificate, or whether meat in Akhlaq’s fridge was beef. They insisted that these were digressions, and the real issue was bigotry and injustice.
Suddenly, the real issue is the technicality over whether a leaflet can be termed “fatwa”, not the bigotry contained in that leaflet or injustice to singers and organisers of the event. No wonder hypocrisy has become synonymous with being “liberal”.
In fact, Scroll and its cheerleaders have now given a way out to mullahs on how to escape criticism. Issue a stricture that is as good as a fatwa, and then the apologists will say, “hey, there was no fatwa”.
Also, now that Scroll has suddenly found respect for technicalities and terminologies, should we expect that they won’t term any random bigoted person as being member of “Sangh Parivar” or “Right Wing” in their next article?
Nonetheless, we at OpIndia.com don’t want to use any term casually, even though we don’t think India should be bound by definitions of Islamic jurisprudence. We are updating our earlier article and appending it with this information.
However, we must point out that this rush to prove that “there was no fatwa” has surely betrayed one thing – the apologists and deniers or radical Islam are in abundance. They chose to focus on technicalities when a young girl’s singing career was at stake.
There may or may not be a fatwa, but there is apologia in abundance.
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had claimed that it was going to form governments in Goa and Punjab, but the party lost in both the states. In Goa, it was decimated as it got only 6.3% of popular votes, which is less than what independents got in the coastal state, while in Punjab, it got 23.7% of popular votes coming second after Congress.
Going by these numbers, AAP should have been more worried about Goa, but in today’s press conference, party supremo Arvind Kejriwal focused almost entirely on Punjab, claiming that EVMs (Electronic Voting Machines) were tampered with to make AAP the loser.
One wonders why a 6.3% vote share in Goa doesn’t make Kejriwal go crazy but a 23.7% share in Punjab makes him come up with crazy conspiracy theories. After all, 23.7% is pretty healthy vote share in a triangular contest.
The answer lies in details.
Consider these data points from Punjab assembly election results, which shows that even though AAP will be the main opposition party in the assembly, it is not exactly the runner-up:
Akali Dal contested on 94 seats compared to 112 by AAP and still got 1.5% higher vote share than AAP. AAP got a vote share of 23.7 % while Akali Dal got a vote share of 25.2%. So even though AAP is number two in terms of seats won, it is number three in terms of vote share.
Akali Dal & BJP combined got 30.6% vote share, which is 5.7% more than alliance of AAP & LIP that got 24.9% vote share. Falling behind a rather unpopular ruling alliance is not something AAP can be happy with.
Akali Dal & BJP combine came 1st/2nd in 80 out of 117 seats (strike rate of 68.3%) while AAP & LIP managed to get 1st/2nd position in 48/117 seats (strike rate of 41%).
On 23 seats that BJP contested, it has more than double the vote share of AAP.
On 23 seats that BJP contested, AAP alliance won zero seats. AAP got 3rd position in 20 seats, 4th position in 1 and managed to be at 2nd position in 2 seats.
Essentially, when pitted against the BJP, AAP fails to be the winner. This is similar to what had happened during the 2014 general elections, when all the seats AAP won in Punjab was against Akali Dal.
AAP’s vote share reduced to 23.7% from 24.4% it had captured in General elections 2014, and the assembly wins reduced to 20 from 33.
While the above data points prove that AAP is not really the runner-up in the assembly elections, other data points prove that it is not the favoured party for many.
Consider this: BJP lost the maximum vote share percentage compared to 2014, a decline of 3.3% which clearly has gone to the Congress party that saw a vote share increase of 5.4%. Akali Dal vote share declined only by 1.1% compared to General elections 2014.
What does it show? That due to AAP’s flirting with Khalistani elements, most BJP voters perhaps thought it wiser to support Congress than to vote for a losing alliance and allow AAP to win.
Not only that, if one looks further at details, it seems that even Akali Dal and its much maligned leaders had not lost support despite an all out attack by AAP and Kejriwal.
Throughout the campaign, AAP leaders tried their best to provoke Akalis by getting personal. AAP ran a personal campaign against Badals. Bhagwant Mann even did pathetic mimicry of Badal’s daughter-in-law & Union Minister Harsimrat Badal. Kejriwal even went to the extent of saying that he will drag Majithia by collar to jail. Now look what happened:
Prakash Singh Badal won the Lambi Constituency defeating Congress CM candidate Amarinder Singh by 22,770 votes. His victory margin is more than the votes AAP candidate Jarnail Singh got.
Sukhir Singh Badal won the Jalalabad constituency by 18500 votes defeating one of AAP’s probable CM candidate and sitting MP Bhagwant Mann.
Bikram Singh Majithia won Majitha constituency by 22884 votes. His win margin was double the votes secured by AAP’s Himmat Singh Shergill.
So this is what the party could manage after AAP virtually made Punjab assembly elections a referendum on Kejriwal’s popularity. Remember Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi Manish Sisodia had asked the Punjab voters to vote as if they were voting to make Arvind Kejriwal the Chief Minister of Punjab.
AAP doesn’t want the debate and analysis of Punjab results to touch upon these issues. To stop debates like “Does Punjab assembly results prove that personal charisma or goodwill of Kejriwal is on the wane?” they started the debate “Can one trust the EVMs?”
Kejriwal’s extreme position in today’s press conference makes sure that its supporters don’t see these details and remain busy with the EVM tampering conspiracy theories. It is a well calculated step to keep the supporters engaged and to deflect criticism of Kejriwal’s brand of politics.
Ever since the results of assembly elections held in five states in February-March this year was declared, some political parties have gone into conspiracy theory mode claiming that the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) were tampered to rig the results. As we will see, from sounding sensationalist, they have gone to sounding downright silly and sinister.
It all started when BJP alliance swept the Uttar Pradesh polls. The first one to claim that EVMs were tampered was BSP supremo Mayawati. She called up a press conference even while votes were still being counted and claimed that EVMs were tampered.
Her logic? How can BJP win in Muslim dominated areas?
BJP winning in Muslim dominated areas can be explained with division of Muslim votes between BSP and SP-Congress or a section of Muslims, especially women (due to triple talaq issue), voting for BJP. However, Mayawati thought that the only way it can be explained was manipulation of EVMs.
BSP officially complained to the Election Commission of India (ECI) and even mentioned this ‘How can Muslims vote for BJP?’ argument in their official letter. ECI responded to the party in detail – explaining how tampering was not possible because any such attempt will easily be noticed by representatives of political parties who are involved by the ECI during the whole process – and tried to drill some sense into them.
Once Mayawati started this ridiculous charge, it was picked up by Congress trolls and then by AAP, which lost massively in Goa and couldn’t perform as expected in Punjab.
Shashi Tharoor, considered the suave educated face of the Congress party, shared a misleading BBC report about EVM tampering that was originally published in 2010 (ironically putting the Congress party in weak spot), which appeared an attempt to spread the rumour that BJP had rigged the elections:
Very disturbing. I hope the Election Commission of India will find “ethical hackers” to quickly block any such attempts. https://t.co/UmDGhZXLP4
To repeat – even those who claimed that EVM “hacking” was possible, conceded that one needed to physically tamper the machines. ECI has explained – refer to our article linked back above – why this physical tampering is not possible as every machine was sealed in presence of representative of political parties who put their signatures on the seal, which is broken again in presence of the representatives before counting of votes.
These representatives are also shown that the EVMs are not maliciously programmed to ‘transfer’ votes to any particular party; and the machines are used for polling only after people are satisfied with the working of the EVMs. Essentially, the representatives of political parties can spot any foul play at various stages before polling and before the votes are counted. The truth is, not a single party raised any such concern before the results were announced.
However, when one is driven by malicious intent, such logical arguments are of no use.
After realizing that a 2010 article on EVM tampering can boomerang on Congress, its troll accounts started circulating some “latest news” that appeared like mainstream media reports confirming that EVMs were tampered with.
For example, see this tweet by an abusive troll, who swings between Congress and AAP on various occasions and has a history of spreading fake news:
These newspaper clippings – one claiming that EVMs were indeed tampered and other going on to claim that elections will be held again in wake of this tampering – are being circulated by AAP and Congress supporters on a big scale. There is a chance that you have received such clippings on WhatsApp.
Now the truth is that these newspaper clippings, of local Uttarakhand newspapers, is something else. These were published to celebrate Holi festival, which fell a day after the results were announced, and they were “Bura na mano Holi hai” articles in line with Holi celebrations i.e. fake news reports for entertainment purpose.
Realising that their clippings are being used by trolls to spread lies and unrest, the newspaper has now come up with a public notice explaining the same:
Fun news being spread as real news (left). Newspaper issuing clarification (right)
These sinister attempts to prove EVM manipulation took a downright silly turn when some geniuses came up with a “mathematical logic” to prove that BJP could not have won the elections. Look at one such “logic” below:
Is it true?
29% वोट सपा को मिला*
23% वोट बसपा को मिला
दोनों का वोट 52% मिला
टोटल वोटिंग हुई 61%
चुनाव आयोग बताए 9% में भाजपा कैसे जीती ?
Basically the tweet above is subtracting the sum of vote share percentages of BSP and SP-Congress from the turnout percentage to arrive at BJP’s vote share, which is supposed to be just 9%. This is another popular WhatsApp forward being circulated and being believed by mathematically and logically challenged persons.
Now this is so stupid and absurd that it is insulting to our brains that one should even try to “prove” why it is wrong. The same was tried by News24 journalist Manak Gupta when a Congress spokesperson read out this WhatsApp forward during a TV debate. After tying to drill some sense into the Congress spokesperson, who claimed that these were ECI numbers (they are not), Manak Gupta gave up:
While it all may sound silly and hilarious to many of us, the tragedy is that these “logical” messages are being spread by Congress and AAP people to prove that BJP rigged elections by tampering EVMs. AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal repeated these charges in a press conference today, and that means that his supporters will now work extra hard to spread the various pieces of misinformation such as those listed in this article.
While such rumours and misinformation might help a few political parties in keeping their support base together, these are sinister as it weakens people’s faith in the electoral process and in independent institutions like the ECI. One hopes that these leaders and their cheerleaders soon realise how dangerous a game they are playing.
In Goa, the incumbent BJP came crashing to 13 seats from 21 seats. The Congress jumped from a mere 9 seats to 17 seats, falling just 4 short of the half way mark. Being the single largest party, Congress was expected to form the Government in Goa, but as things panned out, it was the BJP which raced ahead with other parties. While it may be easy to blame BJP, the Governor, Modi etc, the moot question is the same question which the Supreme Court asked the Congress: Why the Congress didn’t approach the Governor with their so-called majority to stake claim to form the Government?
The easy answers are: Rahul Gandhi was too laid-back in his approach, Digvijay Singh bungled up the negotiations etc. But to get to the real answer, we must first understand a bit of history.
The current supremo of Goa Forward Party (which bagged 3 seats and allied with the BJP), Vijai Sardesai, was once a hard-core Congressman. He was the General Secretary of Goa Congress, and along with then CM Digambar Kamat, had formidable clout in the matters of the party. Then came the 2012 assembly elections, in which Sardesai was denied a ticket from the constituency he had nursed for years, Fatorda. Sardesai broke away, contested as an independent and won. This act, is termed by Sardesai, as the first betrayal by the Congress.
Cut to 2017, Sardesai had formed a regional front Goa Forward Party (GFP), which was essentially a one-man show. He had done so on the back of being one of the most vocal MLAs in Goa, fighting against the BJP, and usurping the role of leader of opposition from the Congress. For months before the elections, Sardesai had been harping on a mahagathbandhan with the Congress and other parties, to stop the split of “secular votes” to defeat the BJP. His seat-sharing demands may have been unreasonable but he wanted to ally with the Congress and other like-minded parties.
The Congress, led by former CM Luizinho Faleiro, kept on dilly-dallying on talks of forming a formal alliance. A faction headed by Faleiro was in favour of going to polls on its own, barring adjustments on some seats, while another faction headed by Digambar Kamat, was advocating pre-poll alliance with parties including GFP. Faleiro was said to be annoyed with Sardesai, accusing him of trying to blackmail Congress.
Finally, after hectic discussions, it was reported that Digvijay Singh had ruled out any alliance, which prompted GFP to declare that they would contest only on 4 seats, to prevent any division in non-BJP votes.
In response, Digvijay Singh announced that a seat-adjustment formula had been struck between the Congress and GFP, where-in Congress would not field candidates in 3 of the 4 constituencies where GFP had fielded its candidates. These 3 included the prized seat of Fatorda, which Sardesai was contesting from. Even as this was announced, media reports suggested that the local party leaders were upset with this move since the State Congress had repeatedly passed resolutions stating that they do not want to ally with GFP.
That should have been the end of the matter, but Congress had other ideas in mind. Even though Digvijay Singh had announced that Congress would not field anyone against Sardesai in his constituency of Fatorda, on the last day of filing nominations, towards the closure of the process, Fatorda block Congress committee president Jose D’Silva filed his papers as a Congress candidate in Fatorda, blessed by papers signed by none other than Congress President Faleiro. With this, the Goa Congress had gone back on its word and once-again double crossed Sardesai, who terms this as the second betrayal.
In the end, the sham of seat-adjustment was shattered, and the same Digvijay Singh announced that the Congress would contest on 37 seats, and support candidates in the remaining 3 seats. Sardesai too in the end backed an independent candidate in the constituency of Faleiro.
The story from here is familiar. Faleiro led the Congress to a commanding position of 17 seats. Having led the party, he must have naturally assumed to be the Chief Minister of the Congress once the Government is formed. But GFP leader Sardesai, who had emerged king-maker with 3 seats, had not forgotten the treachery of Faleiro. To add to his dislike for Faleiro, was his close association with Digambar Kamat, who was the former CM of Goa and the leader of the other faction. Obviously, GFP demanded informally that they would ally with the Congress only if Faleiro would be relegated to a smaller role in the party.
This is where the talks broke down. The Congress began scrambling internally to arrive at a consensus and elect a leader from amongst themselves, who would be acceptable to the party, as well as the alliance partners. This was not an easy task since the party had 4 former CMs as MLAs, and also a few younger MLAs aspiring to move up the ladder. Add to this Faleiro’s claim for the chair of the CM, considering he revived the dead Congress.
While these talks were on, the BJP sensed an opportunity and within record time, sealed deals with ideological adversaries like GFP. The Congress was left sorting their internal issues whereas the BJP had worked out an alliance with a wide range of partners.
There could have been other factors behind GFP joining hands with BJP, the lure of better portfolios, the support of the Central Government etc, but in all of this, the crux remains this: Why Congress could not easily ally with GFP, even though Congress was the single largest party, and even though GFP was led by a former Congress man. In fact the other MLAs of GFP are also imports from the Congress.
The answer to this is the complete break-down of trust between the 2 parties, owing to skullduggery by the Congress. Irrespective of whether it was Faleiro who engineered the last-minute backstabbing, or whether it was Digvijay who double-crossed GFP, the fact remains, the Congress in Goa is again in shambles, with MLAs slamming the party leaders and rumours abound that the Congress would split anytime soon.
At this juncture, one remembers BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi’s analogy:
Like an orange which comes apart when peeled, the Congress party falls apart when given power.
