As Narendra Modi swears in as the Prime Minister for the second time, many people are yet to come to terms with the fact that he has indeed won again and won it even bigger than 2014. ‘Krantikari’ journalist Punya Prasun Bajpai who had predicted more seats for Congress ally DMK than it even contested on, wants to now hold a referendum for at least one Lok Sabha constituency where voters should sign next to their names and declare who they vote for.

निराशा है….सन्नाटा है

इस्तीफ़ों की पेशकश है…

हर नेता….हर पार्टी ख़ामोश है

कोई तो जागे…उठे….बोले..

किसी एक लोकसभा सीट को चुने…

जनमत संग्रह करे

हर वोटर का नाम लिखे… पूछे.. हस्ताक्षर लें

आख़िर उसने अपना किमती वोट दिया किसे..

वक़्त से न डरे…तारिख बनाये — punya prasun bajpai (@ppbajpai) May 29, 2019

Bajpai tweeted last night that there is disappointment everywhere and people are offering to resign. “Every politician and every party is silent. At least someone should wake up and speak up. Pick one Lok Sabha seat, hold a referendum. Write down the name of each voter, ask and put their signature next to it. Whom did the voter give the precious vote to?”

Bajpai needs to accept that official referendums cannot happen just because Bajpai wants it to. Because he is having a hard time accepting that the BJP won.

At best, a survey could happen, but it is also wouldn’t make sense to compare the survey result to a referendum. To begin with, the actual turnout on the day of voting would vary with the survey results. Secondly, whatever happened to the secrecy of ballot? You know, the one where the voter is assured that who they vote for will remain a secret?

- Advertisement -

During the run-up to the elections, there was a huge hue and cry regarding the EVMs and how reliable they are. Conspiracy theories were floated on how EVMs can be hacked. In fact, after the voting was over and when exit polls predicted a landslide victory for the BJP, theories were floated how the ‘exit polls’ are rigged so that the ‘EVMs can be ‘switched over’ before the counting. Following the elections, we saw a pattern emerge where those who were not too happy with the results were blaming the entire electorate for ‘choosing hate’ or ‘choosing Hindutva’ and how the ‘Hindu mind is corrupt’.

The ‘EVMs are hacked’ theory, however, died a sudden death as no one in the opposition questioned them anymore after the matching with VVPATs was carried out and there were no discrepancies. However, the fear psychosis had already been established.

A week after the election results were declared, the propaganda continues. Bajpai’s tweet asking for a referendum style survey or whatever that ridiculous idea his fertile imagination has cooked up shows how hell-bent they are to undermine the very basic institution – that of democracy. To seed the idea so that someone else, especially the ones who thrive on cooking up stories on based on a faulty database can execute this ‘krantikari idea’ to create mass hysteria.

Only recently we had shown how this propaganda website ‘NewsClick’ had alleged discrepancies in elections result based on fake data. In an attempt to discredit the BJP led NDA’s win and to suggest that the elections were somehow rigged, NewsClick floated a conspiracy theory to allege that in many places, the number of total votes counted was more than the total number of votes polled on election day.

The report even spoke of suspected ‘phantom’ votes in various Lok Sabha constituencies in UP, Bihar, MP. They had attached a table showing the numbers to prove that the actual votes counted during the counting was more than the total votes. But a cursory glance of the table will tell that they used some clever manipulations and selective inclusions and exclusions to arrive at the numbers they desired to obtain.

After being called out for the glaring discrepancies, NewsClick had deleted their article. However, the article had been widely circulated before that. Bajpai’s tweet can just trigger such ‘data analytics’ to get into the war mode to spread fear and distrust regarding democracy.

Bahut krantikari.