Free and Fair? Bengal Elections Raise Troubling Questions

1 month ago 25

From the unprecedented refusal of a sitting Chief Minister to resign citing election malpractices to the mysterious "Secret Algorithm" that disenfranchised lakhs, we ask whether the Bengal elections met the threshold of free and fair elections. RTI activists Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri are joined by political researcher and analyst Yamini Aiyar in this edition of Jaanne Bhi Do Yaaro to decode the troubling issues the West Bengal Elections 2026 raise for India's democracy. In an unprecedented step, the Chief Minister of Bengal Mamata Banerjee refused to resign after the elections alleging manipulation in the elections including that her party's counting agents were physically removed from centers, CCTV cameras were deliberately switched off and there was tampering with EVMs. The party demanded that CCTV footage of counting centre should be disclosed for public viewing. In this video we discuss the impact of SIR on people and the eventual electoral outcome. Analysis by The Wire shows that in 150 seats, more than half of West Bengal’s 294, total deletions were greater than victory margins, and BJP won 99. A staggering 91 lakh people were deleted from the voter list of which 27 lakh were deleted after being flagged for logical discrepancy using a secret algorithm. People who had passports and other relevant documents were deleted, leading the Supreme Court to set up appellate tribunals headed by retired judges to address appeals against wrongful deletions. Due to the rushed SIR process, more than 27 lakh appeals were pending and could not be heard by the tribunal- leading to exclusion of these voters. The impact on the ground is even more severe- the endless chase for documents to ‘prove’ one’s identity; the callousness of algorithmic decisions; and the sharply differentiated ways in which this burden of proving identity are experienced across religious lines. We also discuss the Election Commission's repeated resistance to transparency- refusal to make CCTV public, publish Form 17C which is the statutory proof of voter turnout or provide voter lists in machine readable form thereby creating hindering public monitoring of the entire process. Soon after the Punjab & Haryana High Court ordered disclosure of CCTV, the ECI alongwith the Central government amended the Conduct of Election Rules, to restrict peoples' access to election records. By refusing to disclose these essential records, the Commission has allowed a spectre of doubt to grow. The nation must confront the painful question: did the West Bengal elections fall below the minimum threshold of being free and fair, and where does Indian democracy go from here? Join The Wire's Youtube Membership and get exclusive content, member-only emojis, live interaction with The Wire's founders, editors and reporters and much more. Memberships to The Wire Crew start at Rs 89/month. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChWtJey46brNr7qHQpN6KLQ/join

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