HOW TO RIG VOTES AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE, A PRIMER FROM BENGAL

“Rigging of polls” refers to illegal or unethical practices intended to manipulate the outcome of an election.

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This can undermine the fairness, transparency, and legitimacy of the electoral process. While rigging is a fairly well-known activity in all countries and states where elections are held, in West Bengal, it takes on a whole new meaning.

In West Bengal, rigging is an umbrella term for poll improprieties that are done by political parties and is marked by military precision and precise execution. Vote rigging has a long and inglorious history in West Bengal.

In 1972, the then Siddhartha Shankar Ray and his Congress Party had taken widespread recourse of rigging. But in the next Assembly elections, all such efforts failed as the public anger against the Emergency announced by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, swept the Congress away and brought in the Communists under Jyoti Basu.

For the next 34 years, rigging became an accepted and institutionalised form In today's Bengal, rigging encompasses a huge gamut of activities that are done by partymen under the indulgent eyes of the Election Commission, the bureaucracy and the police.

The process to root out nonbelievers starts early. Months before the polls, people of different political beliefs are quietly identified and surreptitiously their names disappear from the voters' list.

Tollywood actress and avowed Communist sympathiser, Swastika Mukherjee was left bemused during this Lok Sabha elections when she found her name was not in the voter list of the area in which she has been staying since birth and had voted in all previous elections.

This way, the names of thousands of voters are deleted across the state.

Before the election, in semiurban and rural areas, the party cadre visit the homes of Opposition supporters and local leaders and politely present widows' garments to their wives and say: "Didi, you know what will happen to your husband on poll day.