When the truth dawned that they have been crushed by BJP and its’ allies in the 2019 General Elections, much of the opposition accepted people’s verdict while a few still like ostrich had their necks under the sand.
Till the election results began drumming in our ears, all we heard was rumblings on Electronic Voting Machines (EVM). Now, Election Commission has said that not even a single mismatch between EVM and Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) has been reported.
Hey Ram!
Most replies were standard. Copy and paste stuff: You-won-we-accept-people’s-verdict-and-congratulate-and-let’s-work together. This includes Rahul Gandhi, Congress president, perhaps realizing that he could be the last scion, a Bahadur Shah Zafar, of a crumbled Mughal dynasty. A historic figure but perhaps of no value to modern India.
Till yesterday, the nation witnessed a desperate attempt by the leaders of opposition parties to unite against EVMs, Election Commission and PM Modi and lay blame of their defeat on them. However, the mammoth size of the defeat has left them in tatters. Barring the southern corner of the country and the state of Punjab, the entire opposition has been wiped out across the country.
Mahagathbandhan, the entwined amalgamation of castiest and communal forces, which Exit polls predicted as a formidable front to take on BJP in Uttar Pradesh, was blown to smithereens.
There were corollary drawn from around the world and past experiences to suggest Exit Polls are not always right. In essence, till the last moment they tried to fool us while knowing within that the game is over.
The unruly Mamata Banerjee’s Bengal was the only state in the country which witnessed violence at every phase of polling. The administration, police, Trinamool Congress workers and hired goons worked in tandem to thwart peaceful casting of votes. By the end of Wednesday, a few frustrated political voices were still issuing threats of violence and anarchy.
The results changed all. As the margins of rout widened, the mouths started zipping closed.
Such was the pattern with most opposition leaders: Rahul Gandhi, Sitaram Yechury, Akhilesh Yadav, N. Chandrababu Naidu, Pinarayi Vijayan, Omar Abdullah, Arvind Kejriwal, MK Stalin, H. D. Kumaraswamy etc.
Not much has been heard from Mayawati, Farooq Abdullah, Lallu/Tejaswi Yadav, Digvijay Singh, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Sharad Pawar or Devi Gowda for that matter.
How happy the electorates would’ve been if one of them had said that “Yes, people we are sorry. We tried to fool you with Rafale and #ChowkidarChorHai; made nonsensical cry on EVM and VVPAT, drummed up the casteist beat, made empty rhetoric on freedom of speech, democracy etc while we never believed in it.”
None of this. Only people who fell for their propaganda and voted for them are feeling cheated.
