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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Maneka Gandhi's threat to single out Muslim voters isn't a bluff. India's ballot is no longer secret -Ishita Trivedi

Maneka Gandhi's threat to single out Muslim voters isn't a bluff. India's ballot is no longer secret -Ishita Trivedi

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published Published on Apr 18, 2019   modified Modified on Apr 18, 2019
-Scroll.in

The BJP nominee in Sultanpur warned Muslims she would know whether they had backed her. If they don’t, she won’t help them if she’s elected to the Lok Sabha.

Last week, Maneka Gandhi, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidate for Uttar Pradesh’s Sultanpur constituency, caused a stir when she told Muslim voters that if they did not vote for her, they could not expect her to help them if she won. The BJP minister emphasised that it would be evident if Muslims failed to vote for her, from voting patterns in neighbourhoods dominated by the minority community.

Said Gandhi: “When the election comes and this booth throws up 100 votes or 50 votes, and then you come to me for work we will see.”

On April 15, another video surfaced of Gandhi warning villagers in Pilibhit district that she would grade villages by the number of votes she receives and prioritise development work accordingly.

In theory, Indians are guaranteed a secret ballot by the Representation of People Act, 1951. Not so in practice, as Gandhi clearly pointed out, especially now that India uses Electronic Voting Machines.

Back when paper ballots were used, the Conduct of Election Rules of 1961 required votes from various booths to be mixed in drums before being counted. This ensured that ballots from a small polling area – street, colony, village – were anonymised. Since 2009, when EVMs started being used nationwide, Form 20 data, or polling booth voting data, is made publicly available by the Election Commission of India. The granularity of Form 20 data – which gives the number of votes received by all candidates, down to each EVM used – and its implications for privacy and the free exercise of a voter’s franchise, are troubling.

As one of the most populous countries with universal franchise, India breaks its own record for organising the “largest democratic exercise in history” every five years. In the 2019 election, to record the mandate of 90 crore voters, over 10 lakh polling booths will be set up. The election commission goes to extraordinary lengths to record every last vote. You may have read about polling officials travelling deep into Gujarat’s Gir forest to set up a booth for a single voter. Thanks to Form 20 data, we know that lone voter – Banej hamlet’s Bharatdas Darshandas, 55 – has consistently voted for the BJP in the last few parliamentary and Assembly elections.

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Scroll.in, 16 April, 2019, https://scroll.in/article/920199/maneka-gandhis-threat-to-single-out-muslim-voters-isnt-a-bluff-indias-ballot-is-no-longer-secret


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