Elections

EDITORIAL: Godse in their Mind

In the final instance, both Nathuram Godse, Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin, and terror-accused, Pragya Singh Thakur, represent the essence and inner soul of the RSS-BJP. Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, who currently call the shots in the government and the party, are quintessential examples of how the hardline operates with not even a pretence of either inner-party democracy, or belief in secular pluralism of the Indian Constitution. The typical bigoted and abusive troll or bhakt, who have no sense of  post-independent India’s history, is thereby the fundamental scaffolding of this party.

This is how your vote is stolen

At the time of writing this analysis, three rounds of the staggered seven-phase general election have been completed. However, much of what was feared from the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) seems to be playing out in different voting booths in diverse parts of the country. Hundreds of thousands of voters have found their names deleted, EVMs have malfunctioned, and the Voter Verified Paper Trail (VVPAT), meant to preserve the EVM’s integrity, has not just stumbled, but also fallen short on its promised seven-second display after the casting of vote.

A One-Sided Story

Hardnews is covering the fourth general elections since it started publishing in 2003-2004. It got all the election results right, even the tricky ones like the 2004 general elections where the buzz in Delhi suggested one outcome and the ground reality told a different story. Predicting 2009 and 2014 polls were relatively easy to read, but the 2019 election presents a different challenge all together. The threat of violence from an intrusive Surveillance State is cramping the freedom with which the ordinary voters shared their views on politics and the government.