Bihar loss shouldn’t diminish Oppn firepower

As Parliament begins a 15-day session on Monday, the national Opposition led by the Congress party is gearing up to go for the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance’s jugular with the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise uppermost on their agenda. The SIR no doubt, has unleashed turmoil with Booth level Officials (BLOs) committing suicide or dying of stress in several states and the paucity of time and training being cited as two reasons for this worrisome trend. Several pertinent questions have been raised by various Opposition parties on the fairness of the exercise with many fearing massive deletions of voters’ names which could turn the entire electoral exercise topsy-turvy.

These fears are all the more pertinent in the context of the forthcoming Assembly elections in Opposition ruled states like West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. These are states where the saffronists, despite their hectic efforts of many years, have not been able to make any dent in the vote bank of dominant parties like the Trinamool Congress in Bengal, DMK in Tamil Nadu or the CPI(M) led Left Democratic Front in Kerala. And when politicians fail to secure a foothold in the vote base legitimately, there could be cunning attempts for a ‘backdoor’ entry with leading lights of the Opposition claiming that SIR is being exploited for this purpose.

They cite the example of Bihar where a staggering 50 lakh votes were deleted from the voter list before the elections. The results are there to see with the BJP-JD(U) alliance making a sweep of the Assembly seats in the state leaving the RJD-Congress front a poor second. The Opposition parties are smitten by the fact that a swing of 2000-3000 votes in each constituency would have dramatically altered the election results. Democracy thrives when every party, whether they are in the ruling front or Opposition, are given a fair chance to fight electoral battles, overseen impartially by the Election Commission of India. This very foundation of electoral politics is being shaken, claims the Opposition after the SIR exercise got underway in 12 states and UTs covering as high as 50 crore voters.

There are many other burning issues on the Opposition platter including the recent terror blasts near the iconic Red Fort in Delhi which claimed nine lives and sent a shiver down the spines of every citizen living in the national capital. The newly introduced Labour Codes which Opposition ruled states like Kerala have refused to implement, suffocating pollution in Delhi which has refused to dip despite a series of measures, foreign policy issues and remunerative prices for farmers’ produce are also high on the Opposition’s agenda.

The huge defeat in the Bihar polls could have dampened the Opposition spirit in launching a full-fledged attack on the ruling front but then such losses are quite natural in a democracy. Political analysts are hoping that the Opposition parties because of the simmering differences among them, do not let the government off the hook and make sure they take the fight on every contentious issue to the ruling benches. For as the saying goes, ‘Democracy is not a spectator sport, it’s a participatory event. If we don’t participate in it, it ceases to be a democracy.’