The firing began with what sounded like a single shot from a .303 bolt action rifle, followed by intermittent bursts of automatic fire from a distant hilltop. The polling staff lay face down on the ground as troopers from the Border Security Force scuttled through the playground of the Kokametta High School and took up position beyond a set of disused swings.
“Firing HE,” said a trooper into his wireless and a few seconds later, a High Explosive (HE) mortar sang through the air and exploded in the dense forests that lay beyond the Kokametta polling booth in Chhattisgarh's Narayanpur district.
The incoming fire stopped; the polling officials sat upright and resumed their forlorn supervision of the three electronic voting machines assigned to the Kokametta, Kacchapal and Jharavi voting booths in the Lok Sabha by-election for Bastar, Chhattisgarh's strife-torn southern tip.
The Bastar by-election has gone largely unnoticed amid the keenly observed State elections in Bengal, Kerala, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Union Territory of Puducherry. But conducting a successful election in the epicentre of India's Maoist insurgency offers a moment of affirmation for the Indian state's vision of parliamentary democracy in the face of a guerilla movement determined to establish a parallel government.
The State government withdrew paramilitary troops from anti-Maoist operations in neighbouring districts like Kanker and deployed them across Bastar to ensure the election was conducted. The Maoists, for their part, detonated three Improvised Explosive Devices (IED), killed one special police officer in an encounter and opened fire on a few polling booths on election day.
According to preliminary reports, the voter turnout across the constituency ranged from 58 per cent in the northern, and more populous, district of Bastar to 20 per cent in the southern district of Bijapur. In Narayanpur, which lies to the east, the preliminary voter turnout is estimated at about 30 per cent, but villages in Maoist-controlled areas showed very little participation.
Kokametta village, for instance, is situated only 40 km from the district headquarters at Narayanpur but exists on the limits of administrative control. Beyond the village lies Abujmard, a vast forested expanse controlled by the Maoists. Kacchapal and Jharavi are only about 10 kilometres away but their polling booths have been shifted to Kokametta for security reasons.
Villagers said that the Maoists had told them to boycott the election and so all the men slipped out of the village on polling day and the women locked themselves into their houses. The polling party arrived by about seven in the morning to find the village deserted.
At half past noon in Kokametta, a sum total of 9 votes had been cast at the three booths intended for a total of 1794 voters. The polling staff duly calculated the voter turnout thus far and transmitted it, via wireless, to their returning officer. “Polling percentages are unchanged,” said polling official Arun Thakur, “Jharavi 0.61 % voting, Kokametta 0.46% voting, Kacchapal 0.46%.”
Fifteen kilometres away in Sonepur, polling booths for eight villages were set up in a tight circle guarded by 200 BSF troopers. According to the Election Commission, 200 polling booths across Bastar have been relocated due to security concerns.
At 10 in the morning, villagers from Sonepur seemed excited about the poll, but refused to let polling agents mark their fingers with ink. “We don't want to draw attention to the fact that we voted,” said a villager referring to the Maoist call for boycott.
At the other booths however, polling percentages hovered around the Kokametta mark. Voter turnout was 1.1 percent for Pangud Panchayat and 2.2 percent for Konge, and only because some of the polling staff happened to be from the two villages and cast their votes.
In a public document, the Narayanpur administration estimates that Pangud and Konge are 19 and 22 km from their assigned polling booths at Sonepur, but residents beg to differ. “Pangud is about 60 km, and Konge about 70 km, from Sonepur. How will villagers come down to vote?” asked Pangud's sarpanch Radhuram Bhandari.
Mr. Bhandari said he lives at the district headquarters and travelled to Sonepur to vote.
