What were the factors behind the repeat of the Modi wave silently, though it looked like a wave-less election? Mr. Modi himself has made some claims in this regard. Addressing the newly elected MPs of the NDA in UP, Modi claimed that his victory underlined the fact that UP had entered the post-caste era. Elaborating further on his victory while addressing party workers in Varanasi, Modi lambasted poll pundits for being prisoners of electoral arithmetic and overlooking the poll chemistry generated by his government’s work and his party workers’ tireless work among the people, which enabled his party to transcend the narrow caste arithmetic of caste combination. There has been a meltdown of vote banks in the wave in his favour, he claimed. Is it true?

Not only some Saffron propagandists but even some liberal commentators in the opposition camp, in their shock and angst at the scale of BJP’s unexpected victory, have attributed BJP’s massive victory to the lack of opposition unity and Congress fielding candidates in all 80 constituencies. Is it also true?

Let us first take Modi’s claim. Let us examine the opposition’s performance. It is well-known that Yadavs and Muslims constitute the core support base of SP and Dalits the core base of BSP. Thus, accounting for 19% Muslim votes, 9% Yadav votes and 20% dalits, the SP-BSP alliance is supposed to represent 48% of the population and voters. The SP and BSP roughly divided the constituencies into two halves and hence they should have polled 24% each assuming that demographically the votes are equally divided into these two halves. But SP polled 18% only, i.e., 6% less and BSP polled 19%, or 5% less than what it should have polled if the votebanks had remained intact. But this reduction of 11% cannot be blamed on the Congress alone as Congress on the whole polled only7.5%. This could only mean that SP has suffered an erosion of 25% of its core vote bank and BSP around 20%, and there was a significant vote transfer problem between SP andBSP.

Was SP-BSP Gathbandhan’s failure mainly because Congress damaged their prospects across the board? It is clearly not the case at all. Going by the final votes polled, the BJP’s winning margin was less that the votes polled by the Congress only in about 11 constituencies. If anything, this only goes to prove that if the SP-BSP had conceded 10 seats that the Congress was asking they could still have had one more in their kitty and brought down the tally of the BJP by 11. Moreover, an all-in opposition unity could have generated a greater momentum. Except for diverting a section of Muslim votes, the Congress obviously had not caused any significant damage to Gathbandhan’s prospects. If so, then why the arithmetic failed to work to act as a core for attracting broader sections of voters?

Upper castes, the so called general category, comprise 21% in UP but BJP polled 49%. How to explain this? The total OBC population in UP is 40% and if you deduct the Yadav population the rest account for 31%. 75% of them and 25% of dalits (mostly Pasis and other non-Chamar Dalits like Valmikis) have voted for BJP and the Gathbandhan has managed to get hardly 25% of the non-Yadav OBC votes. Looking at this angle, Modi’s spectacular victory in UP was not just upper caste consolidation alone but consolidation of non-Yadav OBCs like Patels, Kushwahas, Rajbhars and Mauryas etc., with the upper castes.

Regarding the speculation on poll rigging, it was Mayawati who declared publicly in a press meet that it was not a genuine people’s mandate but a questionable one. She even alleged that it was corrupted to some extent by EVMs manipulation and challenged the BJP to agree for ballot paper system henceforth in future elections. Mayawati’s charge was not a vague one.

Opposition activists uploaded on the social media photos and video footages of EVMs being removed from strong rooms (where the polled EVMs are stored) under the control of district collectors and even some being brought there by trucks with armed escort. In at least 56 districts such movements have been caught on the cameras. Election Commission dismissed these reports saying that the “unused” EVMs were being taken away. The questions arise: Why were the unused EVMs stored in the strong rooms in the first place? What was the need to take them away stealthily before the counting day? And what was the guarantee that they were only unused EVMs and not the polled ones? What the state of Indian democracy has done about the missing 18 lakh EVMs as revealed by RTI queries, and which has now been admitted for hearing by MP High Court belatedly? With such unanswered questions, is this dramatic victory not a tainted one? Civil society activists are rallying in Delhi on 30 May to issue a call to the people to come out and protest such fraudulent assaults on democracy.

Further, based on Election Commission’s own figures, it was shown in sections of the media that there was a discrepancy between polled votes and EVM-counted votes in some constituencies of UP. For example, the difference was 9405 votes in Badaun and the BJP’s winning margin was less than double at 18,384. Did the excess votes get recorded in BJP’s favour? Likewise, the difference in Farukkabad was 3260 votes. It there are such discrepancies, the Election Commission owes an explanation declared three former ECs.

Opposition workers cast doubt about the outcome in about 40 constituencies where mere demographic additions of Muslim, Yadab and Chamar votes alone—the core social bases of the SP-BSP—accounted for more than 50% of the population but BJP won by more than 60% margin. This is the true meaning of the Modi’s magic, they are arguing!(IPA Service)