The Poll Battle
By Inder Jit
(Released on 19 December 1989)
Fighting the election to the Lok Sabha from the Darjeeling constituency was indeed a traumatic experience. Happily for me, the Gods were kind and generous. As the unanimous choice of the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) for the constituency, I trounced my CPM rival, Mr Anand Pathak, a sitting MP, with over 1.46 lakh votes in a State firmly controlled by the Marxists. Yet the poll was no cakewalk. An overwhelming majority of the people of Darjeeling, Kurseong and Kalimpong, no doubt, backed me because of my role in bringing about the Darjeeling Accord. But the voters in the three hill segments of the constituency total only four lakhs. Another 6.6 lakh voters live in the plains below in the four Assembly segments of Siliguri, Phansidewa, Islampur and Chopra. These segments returned CPM candidates in the Assembly poll last year and thus posed a major challenge. Nevertheless, the exercise was well worth its while. It gave me as a journalist a rich opportunity to see things for myself at the grassroots and in the raw.
More than anything else, my experience has shown that the electoral system has become outrageous, even absurd. It is now the root cause of most of the corruption and much else that is rotten and destructive. A candidate for the Lok Sabha is expected to fight his election within a revised (and supposedly lordly) ceiling of Rs 1.5 lakh. Yet this amount is not even enough for a candidate’s minimal expense on the day of the poll. My constituency had more than 800 polling stations. On the D-Day, each station requires a polling agent and an assistant as watchdogs on behalf of the candidate as also a team of some six to eight persons to man the counter outside. All need to be provided transport, food and some honorarium, which works out to Rs 200 per polling station at the barest minimum. This alone adds up to Rs 1.6 lakh for one day. In fact, a Congress-I veteran of many a poll battle told me: “You have not accounted for much else… Polling day expenses now total at least Rs 5 lakh!”
The expense incurred on the polling day is but a small fraction of the total amount required for manpower, vehicles, posters etc. The final figure depends upon the size, terrain and ethnic and linguistic composition of the constituency. I found my constituency comprising the aforementioned seven Assembly segments ridiculously large. It touches Nepal and Bhutan in the north and Bangladesh in the east. The distance from Darjeeling to the other end of the constituency, namely Goalpokhar way beyond Islampur town, is over 200 km! The GNLF which took care of my campaign, had difficulty in providing its helpers even three vehicles each in the four segments in the plains. (An Ambassador car was available for Rs 350 and a jeep for Rs 400 per day without fuel!) In a neighbouring constituency, a candidate is reported to have mobilised at least 50 jeeps and an equal number of cars. The candidate and his party, I was told, spent at least Rs 50 lakhs. Many others are said to have done likewise, even more!
On the face of it, the astronomic expenditure may appear to be a brazen violation of the expense ceiling. But it has not been so since 1974, thanks to an amendment of the Representation of the People Act by Indira Gandhi following a Supreme Court judgment setting aside the election of a Congressman, Mr Amar Nath Chawla, to the Lok Sabha. The Congress Party and Mr Chawla were found to have jointly spent on the election more than the total permitted under the law. The law was then changed to exclude from the poll expense ceiling moneys spent by a political party or by any other association or body of persons or an individual. The result? Money played a bigger role in the 1989 poll than even before. Not a few candidates are said to have spent even Rs 1 crore each, encouraging a top Congress-I leader to assert: “Now you see why all parties need to collect huge funds.” He then named a newly-emerging party and said: “They were willing to strike a deal with us. But they demanded 80 seats plus Rs 1.5 crore per seat. This was just not possible!”
The 1974 amendment, I discovered, has not merely reduced the ceiling on expenses to a farce. It has also pushed the country towards unbridled corruption and undermined whatever little was left of the Gandhian selflessness and moral values among the politicians. Poll time has now come to be viewed by the leaders and workers of most parties as a windfall opportunity to make money periodically. Not a few Congress-I men in my constituency were upset that their High Command had decided not to put up a candidate against me. More than one Congress-I worker told me candidly: “All of us would have made good money out of Rs 30 lakhs to Rs 50 lakhs each party candidate is reportedly being given. You now turn up as the GNLF candidate with a shoestring budget.” Nevertheless, we found ourselves subjected repeatedly to exploitation and mental torture. One leader from the plains, for instance, drove up to Darjeeling on the eve of the poll with a fresh demand stating: “I cannot man the polling stations without more funds!”
More than anything else, my experience has shown that the electoral system has become outrageous, even absurd. It is now the root cause of most of the corruption and much else that is rotten and destructive.
Not just the funding. Rigging too. The names of some 20,000 GNLE supporters were missing from the rolls even though they had exercised their franchise in the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council poll only last December. Another 18,000 GNLF supporters in the terai area chose to have their votes rejected by stamping their ballot papers twice rather than vote for the CPM candidate under duress. We were unable to get polling agents for some 30 polling stations in Siliguri alone because of grave threats from the CPM cadres. Many more polling stations elsewhere in the plains area came under the CPM sway because of the absence of widely-demanded Central security forces. We had 25 Companies of the BSF and other para military forces available in the Darjeeling constituency. All these were deployed in the Darjeeling hill areas. The Returning Officer, who was the DM of Darjeeling, expressed his inability to spare even two Companies each for the CPM strongholds of Siliguri, Phansidewa, including Naxalbari, Islampur and Chopra.
The poll also brought out the double talk and rank hypocrisy in our political life. The Marxists avow total commitment to secularism and never miss the slightest chance of denouncing others as communal, especially the BJP. Yet in the poll campaign in my constituency they unabashedly played the communal card to win and influence Muslim voters, who constitute a majority in the Islampur, Chopra and Goalpokhar area, and turn them against us. The GNLF symbol, swastik within a circle, was described by the Marxists as “a Hindu symbol” and the voter told: “Any Muslim who votes for the swastik will instantly cease to be a Muslim and turn a kafir!” It became a major exercise to expose the CPM’s communal and unprincipled politics. The GNLF, we told the voters, had used the same (free) symbol in the Council poll last year conducted by the Jyoti Basu Government. No objection was raised as there could be none against an essentially secular symbol. What is more, the State Government had also reserved the symbol for use by the GNLF in future Council elections.
How did I come to contest the election? In May 1986, I visited Darjeeling for a ten-day holiday. Before long, I came to be involved as a mediator. Destiny took a hand again. Mr Ghisingh arrived in New Delhi on October 24 and pressed me to accept the “unanimous decision” of the GNLF’s Central Committee to invite me to be its party candidate for the Lok Sabha. Said he: “Thousands of people have come to Delhi to seek Congress-I and other tickets. I alone am here to give a ticket, not to get one.” I took 24 hours to decide. Three factors weighed with me. First, the GNLF’s anxiety to ensure peace and continuing cooperation of Calcutta and New Delhi in the implementation of the Accord. I was viewed as one who could be acceptable to all the three sides. Second, the invitation to a non-Gorkha resident of Delhi to contest as a GNLF candidate had an important implication. It provided fresh proof that the GNLF, though a regional party, has a national outlook. Third, the attraction of playing a more effective role in the country’s affairs.
The poll also brought out the double talk and rank hypocrisy in our political life. The Marxists avow total commitment to secularism and never miss the slightest chance of denouncing others as communal, especially the BJP.
Many have asked: Will you continue to write your syndicated column? My answer is a simple ‘yes’. Journalism has been a mission for me all along, a mission which made me decide against convenient entry into the Lok Sabha on the Congress ticket first in 1957 and again in 1967. I have sought to function as a crusader for almost four decades in accordance with the training imparted to me initially by my father and mentor, the late Mr Durga Das. I have sought to uphold the finest traditions of independent journalism and fair play — without fear or favour. It is this which, if I may add, resulted in my sounding an alarum as a journalist first in regard to Sikkim in 1964, then Nagaland, next Assam in 1979 and finally Darjeeling. I have sought to serve the country through my belief that the strength of any democracy lies in a well-informed and well-debated public opinion. Now I look forward to serving the people through my non-aligned writings as also from the nation’s highest democratic forum: Parliament. — INFA