It is to be noticed that a high number of non-working of EM’s recorded during the first phase of the 2019 Lok Sabha Election.
This made leaders complain to the Election Commission. Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said: “If manipulation of the election continues — the way it did in the first phase — the Election Commission may lose credibility,”.
“In Tripura, manipulation took place at multiple levels,” he said. “Firstly, there was an attempt to ensure that no one visited the polling centers. Then, those who visited were threatened and sent back.”
Even after that, he said, those who were keen on voting “were identified if they belonged to the rival party” and beaten up.
“Finally, two hours before the polling ended, the booths were shut down. What was happening inside…well we know what was happening inside, but EC has to look into this,” the CPI(M) leader said.
In some parts of Andhra Pradesh, election started at “2 or 3 p.m. and continued till early morning”. After “talking so much about modern technology”, the system’s failure was unexpected, he said.
“We will go to the EC tomorrow [Monday] and tell them if the second phase of polling continues the way the first one was, then there won’t be any trust left,” the CPI(M) general secretary said.
Mr. Yechury said the BJP and the Trinamool Congress were helping each other through “competitive communalism.”
“From the information that I received, it seems, that some sort of understanding to have each other as an adversary is evolving, [as]politically and in terms of objective, it suits both as it feeds each other. Great communal polarisation, on one hand, feeds the communal polarisation on the other,” he said and added that such polarised politics would erase space for a democratic civil society. This would be “ominous for Bengal”, he said.
“In 2004, there were 61 Left MPs of which 57 defeated the Congress but still they came together to form the government,” he said.
