By Vanya Mehta, TwoCircles.net,
Nagpur: On April 10, 2014, the residents of Nagpur lined up to vote in an election that is extremely crucial for the political careers of the BJP’s Nitin Gadkari and the seven-time incumbent Congress MP Vilas Muttemwar. The mood in Nagpur was difficult to assess, but favours were certainly handed out the night before to slum areas in the form of liquor, food and money.
Sandeep, an election officer, was overseeing the elections in Nagpur for the third time. “Slowly, people are not as interested in voting,” he said. “Not many people are here as you can see. People are not in the mood anymore.”
Perhaps the heat was getting to Sandeep’s head, or else the AAP candidate in Nagpur’s claims of election rigging are true, because in Nagpur, the voting turnout went up from 43 percent in 2009 to 56 percent this year.
Polling officer Kishore Maragale, who runs catering for Baskin Robbins, was posted at a booth to help people search for their names on the voter list. “Corruption has reached a certain point that people are not willing to accept,” Kishore said. “There is a lot of work to be done in Nagpur.”
Nevertheless, he was not convinced that the AAP had the potential to remove this corruption. “They don’t have much of an idea about politics,” but also when asked about the Modi wave, he said that there was none in Nagpur. “Modi himself hasn’t even visited Nagpur.”
One woman at the polls who lives in one of the nearby slums in Nagpur said that this year, the elections have been more “systematic.” When asked what she meant, she said that in previous years, the polling officers did not check for a photographic identification. This year, the election officers are expecting proper identification and rejecting those who do not bring the appropriate documents.
While the practice of bribing voters is quite common, in Nagpur BJP party workers were even bribing Congress campaigners to tell them not to campaign.
Congress campaigner Haroon Sheikh, who owns a small chicken shop and a hostel in Nagpur, lives in one of the more developed slum areas. He said that Congress party workers gave him a 500 rupee note to encourage him to campaign, while the BJP party workers came and gave him a 1000 rupee note to tell him not to campaign for Congress.
“In every nook and corner [the BJP workers] have made every arrangement,” Mr. Sheikh said. “If a Congress person gives you 500 and a BJP gives you 1000 rupees, then whom will you go for? Elections are basically about money these days.”
According to some Congress campaigners who chose to remain anonymous, the Congress party has money but hasn’t distributed it equally among the party workers.