Curtains up for polls

As the bells toll for the parliament polls, the nation is kept on animated suspension for the coming two and a half months until the final results are declared on June 4. Cited by the Election Commission as the largest electoral exercise in the world, some 97 lakh people are involved in the polling. Its fairness is promised by the CEC while India holds a reputation of holding the elections at multiple levels of governance systems in a systematic manner. Even the elections in the US had ended in confusion when George Bush Junior won the presidency through a court intervention and controversial order. The multiplicity of parties here ensures that one side or the other would be able to form a government after every poll, either alone or in alliance with others. This time too, there will hopefully be no confusion once the last results are declared on June 4.
If the ruling BJP introduced a surprise by declaring the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act and sought to divide the society vertically to its advantage, more important issues might overtake CAA in the coming days. The electoral bonds issue, for one. The details revealed so far following orders from the Supreme Court — which scrapped the system belatedly – shows the BJP government manipulated the system in a way that the ruling party took undue advantage. The veil of secrecy that surrounded the system for several years was lifted after the recent SC intervention. Clearly in a quid pro quo in relation to financial support the companies extended to the ruling party – the BJP, which got the largest share thus far – can be assumed. This is tantamount to huge corruption. This is more so because several of these companies had questionable track records. The Modi government cannot claim innocence about such blatant manipulations.
The INDIA bloc held a grand show in Mumbai on Sunday upon culmination of Rahul Gandhi’s two-months-long Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra that passed through 15 states in its second edition. The occasion also marks the launch of the opposition alliance’s election campaign as candidates’ lists have been released for several states up for polls, including the four that will also have assembly polls – Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. The results this time are anybody’s guess and it would be foolish to rely on the opinion poll results released much before the real tempo for the campaign started building up. The unity of the opposition in some states makes the present electoral fight more worthy of a close watch.