Is the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections likely to see a spurt in weddings and birthday parties? At least back in 2009, the general election season saw such a phenomenon in Ballari district, and very peculiar ones at that.
Former Chief Election Commissioner Navin Chawla, who oversaw the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, in his new book entitled Every Vote Counts: The Story Of India’s Elections, notes that lavish feasts organised by candidates, ostensibly to facilitate “newly married” couples where there were no brides and grooms, were common back then. So were “birthday parties” which had “mushroomed in such large numbers that one could not help but wonder how these were all being celebrated during election season”.
Problem of wealth
Noting that “the Commission’s problem in Karnataka ironically arose not for reasons of poverty but because of its wealth,” Mr. Chawla says that the Reddy brothers, the mining barons of Ballari district with a propensity to win elections — quite literally at any cost, presented the Commission with an administrative challenge.
During the election season, he says, candidates became more religious than ever before as they thronged temples, where there was a propensity to offer liberal donations as well as saris and dhotis for distribution to “devotees”. No less than 600 cases of malpractice were registered by the time the Commission made its review.
Mr. Chawla’s book , to be released at Christ College, Bengaluru, on Monday, says that electoral malpractices could have been considerably higher but for several measures introduced by Manoj Rajan, the then Special Officer at the Chief Electoral Officer’s office, Karnataka. Mr. Rajan is currently Special Secretary, Food Preprocessing and Post-harvest Technology, Karnataka, and MD of Rashtriya e-Market Services.
Mr. Chawla says there was no dearth of inventiveness. For instance, some candidates roped in local moneylenders to liquidate the petty loans of voters. “Even more ingenious were the coloured tokens that could be encashed for half a bottle of liquor (yellow slip) or a full bottle (pink slip).”
Devoting nearly three pages in the book to the electoral malpractices in Karnataka, Mr. Chawla argues that perhaps following the Tamil Nadu model, currency notes of ₹500 and ₹1,000 denominations were slipped in with envelops bearing voter slips, or were neatly folded into the morning newspaper. In some places, cash coupons that could be encashed at shopping malls and retail outlets were distributed.
‘The big boys’
“The big boys [Reddy brothers] had no qualms about renting private helicopters to ferry cash. As each new method was uncovered, Mr. Rajan, the 1999 batch State cadre IFS officer, introduced a susceptible area management scheme, narrowing down areas which were vulnerable on the basis of earlier existence,” he narrates. “Because of these measures, was it any surprise that cash and liquor worth ₹40 crore were seized by vigilant officials? Of such seizures, the richest district of Ballari contributed the lion’s share of ₹16.12 crore,” Mr. Chawla says in his book.
A number of show-cause notices were issued to the Reddy brothers asking why they should not be disqualified. Several cases were registered later, some against Ministers. The State government, then headed by the Bharatiya Janata Party, decided to oppose the Commission tooth and nail, says the former CEC, who has also authored a biography of Mother Teresa.
