“I’m deeply concerned by the election results; the Republic has no reason to celebrate”

0:00 As a Democrat, as someone who uh thinks about the future of the Indian Republic, I'm deeply concerned. I don't resent or resent the winners. Yes, they have every reason to celebrate. Uh but does the country, the republic have reasons to celebrate? I'm not sure the window of opportunity that opened in 2024 parliamentary election. Suddenly whiff of fresh air. Suddenly the country looked more democratic than it appeared for a few years and suddenly it seemed that things could happen, things could change. The window became narrower after Maharashtra and Hana elections and particularly after Bihar election. I

0:45 think it's safe to say that that window is firmly shut today. >> Hi, I'm Karan Taper. Over the last few years, I hope you've been watching my program, The Interview on the Wire. During that period, I've interviewed doctors politicians businessmen scientists, authors, and even the occasional noble laurette. For me, it's been exciting. I hope it's been enjoyable for you. But these, as you know, are tough times. And if this program is going to remain bold, independent, and sometimes even defiant, then I think we need your support. At the end of the day, it's a truism, but editorially independence is best defended by the viewers. So, if you would like this program to remain the way it is, forthright, outspoken, and interesting, then would you consider

1:32 supporting us? All you have to do is to click on the description at the bottom. But more than anything else, I hope you will continue to watch the interview. Your viewership means an awful lot to me. Hello and welcome to a special interview for the wire. In many ways, yesterday's election results were truly historic. The BJP has come to power in Bengal. A new party, the TVK, is in number one position in Tamil Nadu. The Congress has regained Kerala and the BJP has swept to

2:18 a very impressive third victory in Assam. So how should we understand these results? What do they mean for India as a whole and what do they suggest about the BJP's hold over the country? Those are some of the issues I should raise today with one of India's foremost political analysts, the national convenor of the Bharat Joro Aban, Yugendra Yadav. Jugendra Yadav before I talk to you about individual states let me ask you what's your overall impression of yesterday's election results is this a good outcome for India or do you have concerns and doubts >> uh thanks for having me uh Karan I wish I could say it's good because you want to hear good news about your country uh

3:04 but as a democrat as someone who uh thinks about the future of the Indian republic I'm deeply concerned. I don't resent or resent the winners. Yes, they have every reason to celebrate. Uh but does the country, the republic have reasons to celebrate? I'm not sure. Uh to my mind, what happened? You called it historic. Uh yes, in some ways it is historic, not in the best sense of the term because the window of opportunity that opened in 2024 parliamentary election. Suddenly whiff of fresh air. Suddenly the country looked more democratic than it appeared for a few years. And suddenly it seemed that things could happen. Things could change. The window

3:50 became narrower after Maharashtra and Hana elections and particularly after Bihar election. I think it's safe to say that that window is firmly shut today and BJP's hedgemony hgemony in all tenses of the term is again near complete. They do not have majority in parliament. But that lack of majority has been more than made up by these electoral victories and all the key pillars of the opposition alliance DMK, DMC at some stage Amadi party, RJD, every pillar has been attacked, demolished at least for the time being. So yes, it's a time of almost complete

4:38 complete capture of power. BJP's quest for total power seems to be more realized at any other point in recent history. You know, if you look at a political map of India, the BJP today controls the Hindi heartland. It controls the east. It controls the west. It controls practically most of the northeast. Does this suggest that the BJP is now assuing to win a fourth term at the national elections in 2029? >> Uh that's what they would aim at. Uh so after 2024 shock that the BJP received something they were not mentally or politically prepared for. I think they came up with some kind of a long-term road map. The long-term road map had two components.

5:24 >> One was changing the design, institutional design. Second was changing the political strategy. In terms of institutional design, PJP came up with three things. One was uh delimitation which is about to be given effect. Second is SIR. Third is one nation one election. What these three things do is that they change the shakala and pa which is to say the space the actors and the calendar of elections in such a way as to give BJP a permanent advantage. uh in terms of political strategy, BJP decided to attack some of the key regional partners of India coalition

6:10 along with the routine attacks on Congress and the idea was to defeat some of these leaders personally and if you could have noticed most of these opposition leaders have had personal defeats uh along with using power the usual way breaking of parties using of EDS and everything else. So both these things have been deployed over the last 2 years to considerable effect. I would say >> you know from 1947 to 1989 with the exception of the 2 and a half 3 years of JTA rule we had 40 years of unbroken Congress rule in India. Are we now looking at decades of unbroken BJP rule in India? >> Too early to say that. Uh Karan uh I've

6:55 described what BJP's strategy is. uh it's too early to say the strategy has had long-term success because uh Congress's initial dominance uh had an advantage of the freedom struggle. It had the advantage that the opposition was very weak but also it was a system in which Congress had incorporated much of the disscent. So the Congress system as RNA used to call it was a system where the ruling and the opposition were both within the ruling party. Uh BJP doesn't show any sign of that. It's a hedgemony of a kind that leaves large voices, large spectrums of society outside it. And I would say the real

7:43 problem uh is that the with BJP's total dominance of the kind that it has perpetuated of late large voices remain unrepresented. And I do not mean only the religious minority. Dissent differences disaections all of them may not find an expression in the electoral domain. And that's not good news for democracy. In Congress dominance time, all those voices did find place within the electoral domain though not as opposition parties but as oppositional factions within the Congress party. That is not happening and this stifling of voices is not a good idea for democracy. >> Let's then against that background you

8:28 gendra yav focus on the details and let's start with Tamil Nadu. Are you surprised by the result in this southern state? I'm talking of TVK becoming the single largest party with a clear margin, the DMK of poor second and Stalin himself being defeated. Uh surprised of course I did not travel there and as a distant observer and a reader of newspapers. I imagine that Vijay would be a factor but essentially he would eat into both ADMK and DMK vote and DMK would remain ahead of others. That was my assumption like everyone else. But that's a lazy assumption because I had not traveled. But if you put it in a larger context and look back, it's actually not so surprising.

9:14 It's not surprising because in Tamil Li you have the larger frame of politics. Anyone who does politics will have to do around those things of social justice, secularism and uh federalism, strong regional tamil nationalism. DMK had become the sole inheritor of that because ADMK of late had started deviating from that and therefore any anger, anxiety or disaection with DMK did not have an alternative to act. ADMK was fragmenting every day, re reuniting next day and worse. ADMK appeared like a franchisee arrangement of something

10:00 being done actually from Delhi and not truly a double party. So there was a vacuum and Taranu has a history of vacuum being filled by people who come with uh cinema appeal uh NGR uh although Jalerita's root was different but MGR is clearly one uh example that we have and do remember that even analiki had film connections. So an rank outsider fills that vacuum. Uh many newspapers this morning say that travidian politics mold has been broken. No, nothing of that kind. He has very consciously set himself within the Dravidian politics framework. So and as he clearly says DMK is my political enemy but BJP is my ideological enemy.

10:49 Uh so that is what has happened in Tamil Nadu. Very striking but in the larger politics not something which would change the overall course of politics of the state. I hear what you're saying that the TVK is very much within the Dravidian framework but let me within that put a different spin on it. Normally since the late 1960s Tamil Nadu has alternated between DMK and ADIMK. If the TVK has won, is that a sign that the voters were not just looking for change, they were looking for fresh faces, people that they can invest their own personal beliefs in. Absolutely. Yes. Uh any ruling party tends to develop uh

11:35 arrogance, tends to get distanced from people. Something of that kind was visible in the DMK regime though uh we did not fully acknowledge it. Yes, people wanted fresh faces. People wanted and especially now that we know that he enjoys such solid support from young young voters uh and among urban people. So yes, people were looking for something fresh. Uh but as I said, well within the frame, it is not beyond the frame of politics. To my mind, in the long run, it poses a threat more to AIAMK than to DMK. And the reasoning is the following. DMK has a very strong grassroot organization. They may have lost. They faced very bad defeats in the

12:20 past as well. And they've come back because the organization doesn't disappear. AIADNK on the other hand has weaker organization has been as I said fragmenting and reemerging and is connected to the BJC. So if Vijay keeps away from the AITMK which he pulled and if Vijay gets support from some of the DMK partners because he needs about 10 more seats to be in majority if he gets support from uh non AIADK partners then I think in the long run it may be harder for AIADNK to survive >> and yet people often ask the question particularly last night as the results were coming out what does Vijay actually

13:08 stand for? He's deliberately given no interviews and that may well have been strategically a clever thing to do and he said that he's against corruption but that's like being on the side of uh the angels. Everyone's against corruption. So what does he stand for? Or or is the absence of clarity something that makes him enticing? >> Populism is the name for that. It's a technical description. Uh populism is not a negative description. Populism simply means that a leader deliberately keeps uh ambiguity on key ideological policy strategic issues and appeals to so that the leader can appeal to large number of people with somewhat contradictory beliefs. So we really have

13:55 to see uh what he does. Although as I said I would be surprised if he goes away from some of the key things uh that Draarian politics has held namely a strong support for Tamil Nadu. He has uh very strongly already supported the two language formula which is to say anti-Hindi sense. He has supported cast sensus which is a social justice blank. He is uh strongly secular. He happens to be from the religious minority. He's a Christian uh and has taken strong secular stand. So on these broad ideological issues, I do not see him moving away. But on specific policy promises that he has made which people of Tamil Nadu would look to him to

14:41 realize. We have to wait and see. >> Let me ask you one last question about Tamil Nadu. What do you think accounts for the DMK's poor performance? Stalin after all as chief minister had a fairly clean image and his party had extensive welfare schemes that were reasonably popular if not often very popular yet he's been pushed to second position he himself has lost his seat how do you account for that >> I'm not that wellversed in the specifics of politics I'm afraid uh all I can imagine is that some rot had set in which the top leadership was not fully aware of which uh uh was by and large

15:26 ignored and when something of that kind happens then a young crusader drawing upon young voters in the name of anti-corruption can actually change things that's all I can say as of now >> let's come to Assam the BJP has won over 80% of the seats which is a remarkable score for a third time victory even upper Assam which used to traditionally vote for the Congress seems to have been swept by saffron and Gorav has lost in Jor which was considered his family's bastion. That's a major defeat for Congress, isn't it? >> Very major defeat. Uh particularly disappointing because uh the this is the third term for the BJP.

16:13 Second term was not so great. uh Himalist SAMA whilst he has launched many schemes uh many cash dole schemes and so on so forth but there are very very serious charges of corruption against him his wife his family the death of Zubenber G who was a cultural icon in Assam had become such an important issue sitting in Delhi I had no idea that people in villages that ordinary working class people in villages held Zubing in such esteem and all of them somehow held the present government namely Himat Bis Sharma's government responsible for uh not responsible for shielding the culprits

17:01 of Zubing's death uh there were issues of delivery non-delivery and Apar Assam had good reasons to feel neglected so the Congress had a lot to build upon besides the fact that Assam has uh nearly 35% Muslim voters who would not vote for PJP by and large. So Congress had such a good platform to build on. After that this failure is a very serious failure. There are two kinds of failure. Again I must say before we get into Congress's specific failure we must look at an institutional design which very few people have paid attention to. What happened current is between 2021 and 2026 delimitation has taken place in Assa.

17:49 Now in the entire country delimitation which is to say redrawing of the constituency boundaries took place in 2006 but for various technical reasons in Assam and Jammu Kashmir and Shahandi took place only around 2023. What happened in Assam in 2020 with three del limitation is a story that the entire country must know. You know normally we don't pay attention to the issue of boundaries. You know you have boundaries which is normally a test and you add or take a little and that becomes an assembly segment. Bring the five assembly segments within the same district together and you have a parliamentary constituency. That's normally how it takes this. In Assam clearly someone sat with Boothwise voting figures and said okay how do I

18:35 ensure that this seat goes to BJP so we have two seats adjacent to one another one seat let us say has 60% Muslims the other seat has 40% Muslims BJP loses both of them so in the delimitation many areas from this 40% Muslim constituency Muslim areas are added to the first one. So instead of 60% Muslim, now it becomes 95% Muslim. Would you believe it? There are now constituencies and Assam which are 98% Muslim, 96% Muslim. No population demography can do it. They were carved out in such a way that you see we would lose this constituency by 10,000 votes anyway. Why not lose it by 60,000 votes so that the

19:20 other constituency now becomes Hindu. This was a major game done unfortunately by the election commission and this delimitation exercise which should be a warning for the rest of the country gave the BJP a straight head start in about 15 seats or so about 15 seats were in BJP's pocket even before polling began with this design effect however the it does not take away from the fact that Congress did not run this campaign the way it could have running the issues that needed to be brought to the four could not be brought the way they should have been brought and as a result uh Congress did much much worse than it could have or should have done. You know

20:06 what you said about the way delimitation was done and constituency boundaries were redrawn to favor the BJP. That is a classic case of gerrymandering and it's happened and it's happened with the conscious collusion of the election commission which makes it in a sense even worse because the election commission should have been independent and not favoring anyone. >> That's the sad part of it. uh Karan and uh truly the reason why the entire opposition today is opposed to the possibility of delimitation before 2029 is because they have seen the maps of Assam. I mean I wish and someday Karan in your program please get two or three Assam experts and please display maps to show the people of India this is what

20:53 has been done in Assam. And once you look at the maps you would be horrified. How can a constituency be like this? Draw me. You know the classical American name as you rightly said is Jerry Mendering. So you draw the constituency in such a way and then you pick an island from outside the constituency attach it to that. All this done through the election commission of India. Not a coincidence because before delimitation began in Assam, Mr. Himatis Sharma said this delimitation should reduce the political power of the MIA Muslims in Bengal. in Assam. He clearly said it and once the delimitation happened, he actually gave a count. He said now in Mia Muslims have been reduced only to 21 seats of Assam, 22 seats of Assam. And I

21:40 thank that the invitation commission something to that effect he said. So it's that brazen and unfortunately election commission has officially colluded in this communal jerrying of boundaries in Assam. There's one other aspect of Assam that I want to put to you which most people will recall from their reading of the papers and their watching of television. Most people will remember him bisma's repeated use of hate speech. He repeatedly calls the Muslims mas and he said nasty and cruel things about them. Has hate speech also won in Assam? There is absolutely no doubt that Misa Sharma crossed the red line repeatedly.

22:26 I mean I cannot imagine how in democracy, how in any kind of fair system, forget elections, in normal times, how can you say something of this kind? Here is the chief minister openly saying in a large media conclave, not a casual remark saying, you know, I know MIA is a word in Assam which is used for Bengali Muslims specifically. So he says, yes, I want to throw Mia out of Assam. I know legally I cannot do it. So I want to make life so difficult for them so that they run away by themselves. He's a chief minister of the state saying this abouts about 25% of the population of his own state and the election commission watches it. The entire machine watches it. The case

23:13 comes to the Supreme Court. Supreme Court says we don't handle such things. Supreme Court sometimes I feel has the time for all kind of trivial cases. They say no no go to Gojhati High Court. Go and settle this. So uh what is the political impact of it? We have to watch and see. To my mind that was not the decisive factor. The lines of uh communal polarization had been drawn much in advance uh in Assam. Unfortunately, it's kind of cast in stone by now. Uh Sarba was only stoking it further. But to my mind what shocks me most is the Congress's defeat in Upper Afam area. Upper Afam is an area

24:00 where Gorunai himself comes from. Congress had two allies in that area which have had strong presence Rajal and Assam Jaty Parish. Uh and this is one place where Congress needed to stage a setback uh come back. They had done very poorly in the last election as well. and Amatis Sharma's entire campaign was to ensure that Congress is a Nia party and uh unfortunately because of the results this is what Himantra Sharma will now come back and say of course it's a Mia party I mean look at 18 out of 22 of their MLAs are Muslims so that is where it has happened whether it is due to the criminal rhetoric I think communal rhetoric worked in the lower Assam areas

24:48 upper Assam still remains mystery to me. >> I'll move on to Canada, but I'll underline one important point for the audience that in a very critical way, Assam was let down by the election commission. Assam was also let down by the Supreme Court's reluctance or refusal, call it what you will, to actually hear him bas Sharma's hate speech cases. Let's come to Kerala. The UDF has scored a massive victory over the LDF and I know that this has happened after 10 years of continuous LDF rule. But did you expect such a sizable swing? >> Uh I'm surprised by the vote share difference. I thought the vote share difference would be something like 4 3

25:34 or 4% or 5%. But it's actually massive by Canada standards. Uh the last time I saw was probably 10%. I could be wrong. I don't have the figures in front of me but the both share figures were the difference is much bigger than I imagined although do we see in that a long-term shift in Kerala politics I'm not so sure because in a sense what happened current is that since 1980 Kerala has seen very regular alteration one time UDF next time LDF that cycle was broken in 2021 where LDF had a historic second success in victory. So in a sense what the people of Kerala have done is to go back to UDF and have

26:20 given them a kind of a you know a a delay premium a bonus if you were all right we made you wait for 5 years take a little extra and do that uh uh I'm not yet sure if that alters the long-term uh alignment of Kerala politics but it does pose now a serious challenge to the NDF now that they are not in power anyway. where in the state and the BJP is now beginning to raise its uh BJP's vote share has not gone up dramatically. I think they're around 14%, they were 12.5 last time. So they've just gone up slightly. Uh but they have won three seats. Uh they have recovered a seat that they had won in 2016 which was

27:06 their debut in the legislative assembly. They have won two more seats. So in the now what we need to do is to keep an eye on what the BJP does in Kerala. Now that might look odd. Many people who know Kerala might dismiss it but please remember this is exactly we would have reacted 15 years ago about BJP in Bengal. Who would have said BJP can actually come up and form a government in Bengal. So to my mind the interesting thing is now to look at what happens to the NDF in Kerala and what does the BJP do in Kerala. That's the real deal. >> As you put it the BJP has swed seeds in Kerala. We need to watch and see how they sprout and how they flower. But the

27:51 important point is for the first time since the 70s we don't have a communist party in power anywhere in the country. How significant is that? Uh I mean in all fairness the communist parties have not depended on their being in power for their organizational work. In their a days communists were anti-establishment. They worked when they were not in power. So unlike say a party like Ahmadi party or many other parties which depend entirely on their being in power, the communists normally do not. But now that they are they've been sort of relegated. So more than not being in power, the fact is that they now are not a force anymore in Tiba.

28:38 There they had really hoped that they would have a somewhat some kind of a revival in Bengal. That did not happen. Uh and in that situation to be relegated to a a very bad defeat in Kerala which may have been cyclical but uh these coincidences do matter. uh that can actually hurt the communist uh LDF uh the the the left in general in the country. Uh the left has seen a long-term decline and this could become a point where left may struggle to come back in Kerala. >> Now it was the Bengal election that everyone seemed to be talking about and I want to begin by asking you what do you think was responsible for Manka's

29:24 defeat? Not just the TMC defeat but her own defeat as well in Babhabanagar. Was it the SI exercise? Was it anti-inccumbancy after 15 years in power? Was it loss of the woman vote? Or has there been very substantial Hindu Muslim polarization as a result of the way the BJP ran his campaign or all four? >> Uh yes. So you mentioned uh uh that karnan I would say four four actors and four factors. Uh the first actor is TNC itself. The fact is that in the 15 years of TMC rule lot of uh disenchantment had settled. It was already there in 2021

30:11 but MTA Baleri's persona kind of covered it up. Things have grown further. There was dis enchantment, disappointment, even anger which people like us may have underestimated. Uh I've been listening to many journalists who are not Modi media who've been traveling in those areas and they have registered they have recorded the fact that at the ground level enormous resentment had been building up. Uh so that's one factor which we cannot ignore. You cannot go from plus 10 to minus5 unless something of that kind happens. Number two was uh the BJP. Uh people talk about BJP's great organizational work. I don't quite believe it because BJP was in shambles 6

30:56 months ago. If you went to Bengal, BJP leaders were running away joining TMC. Organizationally they were nowhere there. After 2024 poor performance in Lok Sabha, BJP organization had kind of crumbled. what brought them together was central government uh and BJP's ability to do a very very strong communally polarized campaign. If the BJP had something very sharp to offer, it was that communal campaign. They the the the strategist who went from Delhi did a lot of work. But it is not the case that BJP had a great organization. What they had was a very sharp communal polarization pitch and once again like Assam election

31:42 commission just watched as the BJP would do Hindu Muslim all the time. It was a very sharp communally polarized campaign. The third factor was the central government which really did not allow PMC to function. The governor functioned like a BJP headquarter, PD, CBI, all kinds of raids, raids on the party strategist of PMC. Besides that, uh the central government did not allow some of the popular welfare schemes to function in Bengal. I would mention two in particular. The NGNR, the Bandrega, which worked throughout the country but was not allowed to work in Bengal. no funds to Bengal and the Grain

32:29 Aasna PM Grain Aasna again a very popular scheme that allows you to distribute benefits to the people again not allowed to function in Bengal. So that was number 33. The fourth player unfortunately was the election commission of India and the exercise of SIR. uh Karan when we spoke uh I think 6 or 8 months ago in SIR I had said and you asked me so why in Bihar what are they trying to do in Bihar and I said well it's targeted at Bengal sir was designed originally for Bengal and was tried out in Bihar to begin with and that's exactly what has happened so somebody sitting in BJP office thinks that okay we have a chance

33:15 in this election provided someone can rule say about 5% of votes which are sure to go to Bahabaka once you do that then the level then the ground is sort of evened out then we can do it and that's exactly what SI story in Bengal was you see AC had all kinds of problems the first problem was that there was nothing wrong with West Bengal's voters list the West Bengal voter list has exactly the proportion of people that they had in the adult population of Bengal. So how they quarreled with it? The second problem was that in the first phase of SIR Bengal had very normal deletions. No could not happen. So clearly some orders came from above and

34:01 said no you have to delete go and do something special and then AC does extraordinary things in Bengal which have not happened anywhere else. Karan it's important to remember because most people do not remember this. has become more like Gaza or Lebna where we get triggers every day and we say and things of that kind but so everyone believes yes of course Bengal voters were deleting S but hasn't it happened everywhere else no something very special and unique happened in Bengal which did not happen anywhere else namely people who had filled their enumeration form who were not absent or dead or shifted

34:49 who gave their certificates who put in their papers or they were deleted in the second phase of SIR something that did not happen in any state. 27 lakh people were deleted in the second stage of SIR something that did not take place in any other state. And one more thing current that all of us forget because so much is happening in Bengal that you lose track of them. More than five lakh names initially we thought six but we have not checked. 5 lakh 15,000 names were added after the final last and final voter list was released by the election commission. Don't ask me how is that possible. I think legally it's impermissible. But

35:35 the fact remains that after the final voter list was released by the election commission on 9th April and whatever was the last date the the voter list that was used for the purpose of election had 5 lak 15,000 additional names. So put the two figures together 27 lakh 10,000 names beneath it in a way which is extraordinary which is primma facicy wrongful and now we have sufficient evidence to see that these were targeted targeted at Muslims targeted at areas which were dominated by mockd so 27.10 10 + 5.15 this mysterious additions adds up to

36:22 32.25 25 32 lakh 255,000 and may I say karan that today this morning when you check the lead of the BJP over the TMC in the entire state of Bengal it is 32 lakh 111,000 coincidence yes but what a strange coincidence that BJP's lead over TMC is exact exactly the same as the number of dubious deletions and additions made by the election commission. >> Let me ask you a specific question about the election commission. Has the SIR

37:09 exercise in Bengal cast doubt on the credibility of the election? And let me add to that and has the behavior of the election commission behind the way that sir was carried out cast doubt severe serious damaging doubt on the credibility of the election commission on election commission there cannot be any touch normally one should speak with some reservations on sensitive issues of this but unfortunately election commission has left nothing to imagination it's absolutely brazen and clear as I just look at the following facts. Number one, the voter list in Bengal when SIR began the voter list had 7 cr 66 lakh people.

37:57 Bengal's adult population at that point determined by the government of India was 7 cr 67 lakhs. They were exactly identical. So where was the problem to begin with? Election commission said no no no Bengal has a special problem while there was none. Then in the first phase Bengal had uh 7.7% deletions. The first phase is the what is called the ASD. People who are absent, shifted, dead or duplicate they are deleted as it has happened all over the country. Election commission said very few deletions have taken place in Bengal. That was false because lesser deletions than that had taken place in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. Election commission doesn't find a problem with that at all. These

38:42 are BJP ruled states. Third, the election commission said, you know, the weird thing about Bengal is that very few people have been undeclared unmapped. Unmapped means people who were unable to trace their ances you know their their their blood relative to someone who was a voter in 2002. So I have to prove that either I was a voter or one of my blood relatives was a voter. uh election commissioner said that that number is surprisingly low in West Bengal. What was the number? 4.5%. What was the number in Tamil Nad? Uh 2.3%. The number in Chhattisgarh was 3.5%. And Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh was

39:28 1.6%. Election Commission doesn't find any problem with these four states. It's only Bengal. So there's absolutely no doubt that the election commission chose Bengal for a special treatment. 8,000 micro observers were put in Bengal to supervise the voters list which primari had no problem. How many micro observers were appointed in the rest of the country? Zero. 30 is officers were sent to Bengal to supervise the voters this business. How many were sent in Uttar Pradesh which is much much bigger than Bengal? Only four. Election Commission goes to the Supreme Court. against its own erros who are the SDMs to say no no they are not competent they

40:14 are not actually they are not qualified to be SDMs and so on and creates a contrived dispute in the court which leads to this extraordinary mechanism of uh 60 lakh doubtful cases or creation of election commission and election commission then and then the adjudication process whatever happens thereafter election commission can say we were not doing it this was the supreme court doing some questions have to be asked to the Supreme Court as well. But and after that if you look at the number of uh transfers that take place out of all the transfers that took place during this election at the orders of election commission 95% are from Bengal election commission gives this extraordinary order that uh during the

41:00 counting only central government employees would be there. What is this? If this is not partisanship, what is partisanship? Not to mention the effect of election commission's own statements uh tweet against the TMC. Election Commission behaved like a uh like a political party. It's not an empire, it's a player. >> And on top of all of that was the introduction of a criteria that simply didn't exist when the S exercise was done in other states. Logical discrepancies. As a result of which there are multiple cases and they've been in the papers practically every day before the voting happened of passport holders who have been denied the right to vote of husbands who've been denied to right to vote though their wives are

41:46 voting of parents who have been denied the right to vote or their children are voting because of simple things like a discrepancy in the spelling of the name. The initial comes sometimes before the surname the surname comes sometimes after the initial. These are the peculiarities that will always be remembered about how the SI exercise has been unjust to Bengal. So much so Karan that I looked at this case where someone's father's name is if Karunu spelled with Kh and 22 years 24 years ago in 2002 voter lives the father's name was spelled as if Harul with a space between K and H. That becomes a logical discrepancy on

42:34 the basis of which this man who holds a passport of India has been denied a voter's right. But can it get more ridiculous than that? Now logical discrepancy. The interesting thing is that current logical discrepancy were identified in all the states. It is only in Bengal that they were weaponized. Election commission used logical discrepancy in Madhya Pradesh. In one stage they had identified three cr logical discrepancies. Guid exactly 1.2 crore logical discrepancies exactly the same as West Bengal but in no other state were these logical discrepancies weaponized. Election commission looked at it. Yeah errors. Yeah this happened. That's all right. They dismissed it. It's only in Bengal that they were weaponized and they were weaponized in a

43:20 very special way. 1 cr 36 lakh logical discrepancies were identified of the kind that we have noticed which of course included people I come out of them 76 lakhs were exonerated 60 lakhs were identified as things which require special adjudication and to this day karan I do not know who decided which of why these 60 black cases were in one basket and why those other 76 36 lakhs were in another basket. The only thing we know is that in this 60 lakh 2/3 were were Muslims. The only thing we know is that in a place like Nandiram which is not in the Muslim dominated

44:05 belt of West Bengal where in the population you have only 25% Muslims but among cases sent for adjudication 95% were Muslims in Bhavani Mtabi's own constituency that you mentioned cases sent for jud adjudication were overwhelmingly Muslims which gives rise to the doubt that someone that it was not the election commission it was not computer software. Someone sitting in the BJP office was deciding okay these many cases need to be sent for uh for uh adjudication and not the others. This is what the election commission was involved in. This is most partisan and yes it casts a shadow on the overall results. I can give you the numbers if

44:51 you want. >> Please do. uh we were you know we were uh looking at the numbers last night to see in how many constituencies uh is the total number of deleted voters of the kind that we mentioned and uh let me underline I'm not speaking of all the deleted voters because if we were to look at all the 19 lakh voters that were excluded that would cover the whole of Bengal I'm only focusing on this 27 lakh that you and I have been talking about plus the 5.15 five lakh mysterious additions of which no one has an idea of who did it, when it happened and how. There are in all 32 constituencies which were earlier held by TMC

45:38 which were won by the BJP yesterday and where BJP's margin of victory is smaller than this mysterious additions and donations that took place in the last couple of months. So at least 32 constituencies can clearly be put in that category where election commission's dubious intervention has changed the outcome. >> I'm very glad you pointed that out and I'm very glad we've spoken at length about the SIR exercise and the manner in which it has visiated the election in Bengal. But let me ask you a different sort of question while talking about the result. In 2021 and 2024, Ma Banerjee won sizable majorities in Bengal first

46:25 at the state level then at the national level. That was comprehensively reversed this time. Beyond anti-incumbency, beyond the SIR, is this also a sign of overconfidence on the part of the TMC? I asked because right till the last moment Ma her supporters and her MPs were busily claiming that they would win over 200 seats. >> That's true. I also spoke to many friends uh in TNC and yes they were conf they were confident that they would win uh 175 at least 175 or more. Uh yes they may have been overconfident but they were not complacent. You see, I could accuse uh DMK possibly of some degree of

47:12 complicity. Uh Matab Benerji was not complicit. He was on the street all the time not taking anything for granted. Uh so that is the you know the real thing that the entire opposition would be looking at which is to say if MTA can be defeated this way then does anyone else have a chance? Let's briefly before we end look to the future. Does the verdict in Bengal suggest that it might be very difficult for ruling parties to carry out secular policies which benefit Muslims for fear of consolidating Hindu votes against themselves? Is that one of the lessons that emerges from this outcome in Bengal?

47:58 >> Uh that's not a new lesson, Karan. uh that's been happening for quite some time and I'm afraid uh the opposition because they do not have a language to speak about secularism a language that can actually also speak to an ordinary Hindu. Uh that is why secular politics has gone in a shell. uh secular parties have for quite some time much much before Assam or Western God have been very reluctant to give tickets to Muslims because secular politics simply has no no language no ideological way except a a a a a secular assertion which is cut off from popular sentiment they have no way of being able to talk about

48:44 it so all I'm saying is that this is something which has happened much in advance. This is not for the first time and uh yesterday's results have only consolidated this problem of secular politics. On the one hand, parties which are called secular have no way of being able to uh of of being able to raise issues of oppression of injustice with Muslims. On the other hand, players like Assadin OC or other parties have a way now of reaching to the Muslims to say look secular politics parties don't do anything for you. They are afraid of even talking about you. We are talking about you. Which actually in

49:31 a sense reinforces the BJP. It helps the BJP. So this is the trap of secular politics and yesterday's development have deepened further. >> But will the situation get worse after Bengal? Uh yes it has got worse certainly uh because uh now the given the kind of pitch that the BJP has managed to build in Bengal and successfully and uh my fear is what they are going to do as a followup because uh this foreigners business illegal migrant bog I call it a bogey because actually uh there is very little evidence uh that we have large scale illegal Muslim Muslim migrants. We have non-skilled illegal migrants in

50:17 Assam but as has been amply proved a majority of them are actually Hindus. And it stands to reason that actually Hindus would come to more Hindus would come to Assam to from Bangladesh than Muslims. But my fear is that in the coming months BJP would know raise the pitch even further. Bengal government, central government put together and the opposition politics of parties that we call secular really may not have much of a response and they may actually just go in shank even more than before. >> So is secularism becoming his something that's part of history? H I wouldn't say that there is

51:04 there's something in our culture and civilization which teaches us to live together. The modern language of secularism is recent. And that modern language of secularism has to find ways of connecting with and relating to these deeper traditions which did not call themselves secular. Uh these were traditions of coexistence and living together. In our freedom struggle, some of our greatest leaders, Nehu, Gandhi, Malana, they all found ways, two of them were deeply religious. Malana and Gandhu were deeply religious. They found ways of connecting to a religious language to

51:50 defend what we today call secular. Narrow did not use that religious language, but he could draw upon the culture of this country. Unfortunately, the secular politics today is divorced from that and that kind of secular politics would find it very hard to go ahead. But I'm absolutely convinced that the deeper tradition of this culture, our civilizational cult, civilizational tradition will find some other way of expressing itself. My last question you're going to yada. It was as an opposition leader during the years of left front rule that Ma Banerjee first made her name. Now that she's been forced back into opposition, can she

52:36 rework the magic again? Or after 15 years as chief minister and also remember she's 7172 today, would that be very difficult to do? After all, she'll be 7677 when the next state election in Bengal happens. >> A difficult question. Uh I would never write of MTA. Remember her entire political career has been a history of struggles uh struggled through the left front regime and it was very very hard for anyone to survive at that point in the days of left front. Maab Benji fought that. So she's a born fighter. I would not rule that out. At the same time uh

53:23 we need to remember that uh the previous hgeimon of uh West Bengal left front just collapsed just melted after their electoral defeat in 2011. So uh not so much about mab energy but am about the structures below her many of those structures that she inherited from the left these structures have proven to be historically vulnerable. These structures can very rapidly shift to the BJP. How would Ma Benedi survive in that situation is an interesting question but as I said I would never write her off. And may I add another larger question that MAJ and other

54:09 opposition leaders will have to confront after yesterday's uh uh outcome and that larger question is has our democracy sunk below the minimum threshold of credibility of any electoral democracy. Uh electoral integrity has never been 100%. Even before Modi, it was not 100% electoral integrity. But you could always say well in the last instance electoral results reflect the outcome of popular choices. Can we say that now in the case of Bengal and Assa given the very systematic uh interventions made by the election commission and by the central government. I'm not saying the election

54:56 results would have been overturned but have we crossed that threshold is a question that election that all opposition parties including of the entity will have to think uh if delimitation of Assam kind becomes a template for the rest of the country and if sir of the Bengal kind becomes a template for the rest of the country we could say goodbye to internal politics in this country That's a hard reality that the opposition faces today. >> I'm very glad you raised that issue. It's something that the audience needs to think very carefully about. It raises fundamental serious and deeply disturbing questions about the future of our democracy as you put it about the

55:42 credibility of the way we actually exercise our mandate. I'm deeply grateful because I think it's a subject that people need to ponder over very very carefully. Thank you for your time. I'm deeply grateful. Take care. Stay safe. Hi, I'm Karan Taper. Over the last few years, I hope you've been watching my program the interview on the wire. During that period, I've interviewed doctors politicians businessmen scientists, authors, and even the occasional noble laurette. For me, it's been exciting. I hope it's been enjoyable for you. But these, as you know, are tough times and if this program is going to remain bold, independent, and sometimes even defiant, then I think we need your support. At

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