Mumbai, May 5 (IANS) The Shiv Sena Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray (UBT) on Tuesday said the results of the state elections have unfolded exactly as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had planned. However, it has raised serious concerns about the “pattern” used to secure these wins and the grim state of democracy it represents.
The Thackeray camp, in a scathing editorial in the party’s mouthpiece, ‘Saamana’, claimed that the “Modi-Shah pattern” of capturing elections was evident in the results for Assam and West Bengal. In Tamil Nadu, this same strategy reportedly led to a change in power, displacing the DMK. While actor Vijay’s TVK party did not reach a full majority, it is expected to secure over 100 seats due to strategic vote division — leaving the DMK-Congress alliance with around 70 seats and the BJP-AIADMK alliance with approximately 50.
The editorial said that while these five state election results are ‘game changers’ for the BJP, they do not appear to have been achieved through straightforward means. “The greatest anticipation was for West Bengal, where Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress had won three consecutive terms. During this time, Modi and Shah exerted every possible effort to defeat her but failed. However, this time, they found a “third partner” in Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, which led to the BJP’s success,” it alleged.
According to the editorial, the credit for the BJP’s victory in West Bengal must be given to Gyanesh Kumar, who acted like an ally of the BJP. “He deployed 3,00,000 paramilitary forces in Bengal and moved all state government officials out of the state. While his stated ‘noble’ intent was to ensure a fair election, he did not display this same intent in Assam. Modi and Shah harboured dreams of forming a government in Bengal; to achieve this, 92 lakh voters — the majority of whom were Mamata Banerjee supporters — were removed from the voter lists,” it said.
The Thackeray camp argued that this once again demonstrates the methods the BJP employs to fight and win elections. The results in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal will have long-term consequences for national politics. “Given the dishonest manner in which the Election Commission behaved, opposition parties must seriously consider whether they should even participate in future elections. It is suspicious that the BJP began preparing victory celebrations immediately after the polling in West Bengal; this suggests that the conspiracies for victory were orchestrated behind the scenes,” it noted.
The editorial said that in a democracy, if elections are fair, defeat should be accepted with grace as the will of the people. However, the current results cannot be viewed as the people’s mandate; rather, they are verdicts delivered by the BJP with the cooperation of the Election Commission. This was blatantly visible in West Bengal, just as it was previously seen in Maharashtra and Haryana. This represents the degradation of Indian democracy and raises questions about the fairness of the electoral process.
The Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena has termed the celebrations following these victories as a “hideous form of democracy” while pointing to a disturbing irony. “While BJP workers celebrate with festivals, the country is grappling with a rise in atrocities against women. In Maharashtra, reports of brutal crimes against young girls have shocked the nation, yet these issues seem overshadowed by political revelry. If someone calls this perversion a ‘victory of religion,’ then no saviour will ever descend to earth again to protect religion, because true religion is being drowned out,” it claimed.
–IANS
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