From water taps to religious tags

(From left) Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray and senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Ashish Shelar. File pics/Kirti Surve Parade

Religion is usually brought into politics only during election campaigns to polarise voters. Breaking this tradition, Maharashtra seems to have stooped to a new low. This time, objections to errors in the voters' list have been highlighted by political parties on religious lines.

It all began as a technical fault or, as alleged by many political leaders, administrative lapses. The debate could have easily remained focused on these irregularities and been addressed accordingly.

Mistakes in the voter list are nothing new. They have been around for decades. Every election, people complain about missing names, duplicate entries or wrong addresses. These errors are highlighted on polling days, and the issue continues for the next few days and is subsequently forgotten by voters and
even political parties.

That's not the case now. This time, things are looking different as the issue has taken centre stage and turned into a political fight questioning the intent and honesty of the Election Commission.

Political parties have jumped on this faulty list bandwagon. These leaders are trying to turn the electoral roll issue into a tool to score brownie points. Political parties are now questioning the faith of voters whose names appeared multiple times in the electoral rolls. This has diverted the attention and changed the tone of the discussion on the faulty list, and turned it into a political battle.

In a digital and technology-driven world, it is surprising that the electoral roll still struggles with accuracy and simple errors like duplicate names, wrong gender, etc. Ideally, technology should have flagged and rectified these mistakes at the click of the mouse, obviously after thorough verification by election officials.
Local body polls are supposed to be about development issues, such as roads, water, waste, streetlights, schools, and health facilities. But, this time, the beginning rounds of local polls have moved from development to division and from water taps to religious tags.

The first signs of this shift became clear last week during a protest rally in Mumbai, where Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray took on the Election Commission over irregularities in the voters' list. While making his point, Raj mentioned examples of duplicate names, citing people with surnames such as Patil and Bhoir.

A few days later, Maharashtra minister and senior BJP leader Ashish Shelar hit back at Raj, accusing Thackeray and the Opposition of selectively pointing out Hindu duplicate voters and ignoring Muslim ones. The ruling alliance regime went one step ahead and termed the entire exercise by the Opposition parties as "vote jihad".

From there, the political mudslinging only got worse. Forgetting that even their leaders have attended religious and traditional parties hosted by the Muslim community, the MNS leader pulled out old photos of BJP leaders (chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and Shelar) wearing skull caps (traditional Muslim cap) and attending an iftar party.

Political leaders and their party workers from both ruling and opposition camps started identifying errors on religious lines (duplicate Hindu and Muslim voters).
Since then, every statement and move has started becoming ammunition for the next political rally. A clear sign that the poll agenda is changing track from governance to religion is a sign of worry for Maharashtra, which has long prided itself on being a progressive and forward-looking state.

It is worth remembering what's at stake. Raj said that of the total eligible voters (it is said to be over 9 crore plus) in Maharashtra, around 96 lakh names are faulty in the list, and nearly 8 to 8.5 lakh of these mistakes are in Mumbai and Thane alone. These are not small figures and reflect a deep problem in the system.
Maharashtra needs to press the reset button at the earliest and before the damage done is irreparable. With local body elections scheduled in the coming months, there is no better chance than this to get the state back on its development track.

The Election Commission must act swiftly to restore confidence. It has assured citizens of the use of a system to mark duplicate voters using double stars. But, how effective this new method is will become clear only after the elections.

Cleaning up the voters' list is not just about efficiency; it is now a question of credibility, too. A free and fair election process cannot be built on faulty data. The longer it takes to clean up the list, the greater scope it leaves for political parties to exploit the error in the electoral rolls for their own advantage.
Citizens, too, must step up. It is time that voters start exerting pressure on political parties and their leaders by questioning them about solutions to their daily struggle, employment opportunities and development issues, rather than clapping at speeches that talk about linguistic pride or divide on religion.

Once political parties gauge voter mood and realise that citizens are now demanding governance over other political gimmicks, the speeches will soon shift from communal to civic accountability. This will be the beginning of the end for a political movement based on religion. Once those unwarranted issues fade away, pride, performance and progress will finally take the driver's seat.

Maybe then we will get back to what really matters, job opportunities, clean water, safe roads, waste management, good schools, and healthcare (Sadak, Pani, and Naukri), the updated and refined slogan of new aspiring India, which in the 1970s and 80s used to be Roti, Kapda aur Makaan.

Sanjeev Shivadekar is political editor, mid-day. He tweets @SanjeevShivadek

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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper