New Delhi: A shell-shocked Congress said Saturday that the party’s drubbing in Maharashtra was an outcome of “targeted ground-level manipulation”, expressing surprise over the turnaround made by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state after having performed poorly in the Lok Sabha elections barely five months ago.
Addressing a press conference at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters in New Delhi, party general secretary in charge of communications Jairam Ramesh alleged that the stakes were so high for the BJP in Maharashtra that it misused the administrative machinery to ensure favourable results.
“There is no doubt that the level playing field, a term that the Election Commission often uses, was attacked in a targeted manner. The results are unexpected and extremely surprising,” Ramesh said, avoiding a pointed attack on the electronic voting machines (EVMs). The Congress had made such an attack after its loss in the Haryana assembly polls in October.
On Saturday, the Congress leadership questioned the fairness of the elections in a more roundabout way. Ramesh said the credit that is often reserved for the BJP’s micromanagement in elections is essentially a “euphemism” for “ground-level manipulation”.
“Each one of our leaders has been targeted. These are leaders who have won election after election. Never have any questions been raised against them…[they] are models of integrity,” Ramesh said.
“They include senior ministers, former chief ministers. It’s targeted manipulation. After all, the administrative machinery is also controlled by them, the BJP. There is no state where the stakes are as much for the BJP as in Maharashtra,” the Congress leader added.
Following the Haryana results on 8 October, the Congress, which failed to reclaim the state from the BJP, had rejected the verdict in an unprecedented manner, saying it was “a victory of manipulation, the victory of subverting the will of the people and a defeat of transparent democratic processes”.
Subsequently, it approached the poll body, flagging instances of EVMs found with 99 percent battery capacity during and after counting. These registered BJP wins, the party said, while those at 60-70 percent charge registered Congress victories, it claimed. The Election Commission responded on 29 October, dismissing the allegations.
The Election Commission had also retorted that “such frivolous and unfounded doubts have the potential of creating turbulence when crucial steps like polling and counting are in live play, a time when both public and political parties’ anxiousness is peaking”. It accused the Congress of raising the “smoke of a generic doubt about the credibility of an entire electoral outcome in exactly a similar manner as it had done in the recent past”.
While hailing the JMM (Jharkhand Mukti Morcha)-Congress alliance’s victory in Jharkhand, Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera said this would not deter the party from raising questions over the results in Maharashtra.
Ramesh also said the electoral reverses would not cause the Congress to deviate from its agenda of highlighting economic inequality, the demand for a nationwide caste census, its campaign against social polarisation and the alleged nexus between the BJP and the Adani Group.
“There will not be any change in the Congress party’s agenda,” he asserted.
(Edited by Radifah Kabir)
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