ASSEMBLY SHOULD RISE TO CULTIVATE PEOPLES’ CONFIDENCE

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

From an Operation Table at Bhubaneswar to All India Institute of Medical Sciences at New Delhi to yet another Operation Table at my workplace city, the time was so tedious and tiring that I had decided to take another week to return to my desk. But let us forget that.

Orissa Legislative Assembly is going to resume its session today. It should rise to restore democracy’s dignity and to cultivate peoples’ confidence in the system of rule by representatives.

Chief Minister Navin Patnaik should, on his own but official accord, make a statement in the House detailing every facet of the political farce that his party BJD has forced the peoples of Orissa to watch during the intervening period.

Ramesh Raut of Athgarh, an independent candidate adopted by BJD when electioneering for the Assembly was in full swing, had resigned without stating any reason and has withdrawn the resignation in reaction to intervening developments that has exposed how democracy has been derailed in Orissa by vested interest politicians in power that Navin Patnaik heads.

As representative, Raut has replaced Ranendra Pratap Swain, who, as BJD candidate, had failed to pass the scrutiny test on the table of the Returning Officer as the BJD ticket submitted in his support was allegedly not genuine.

Navin as party chief has neither claimed that the party ticket was genuine nor has taken any action against whosoever had submitted the controversial ticket knowing the same to be not genuine. But to the bafflement of peoples of Athgarh he and his super shadow Pyari Mohan Mohapatra had taken up electioneering in support of Raut projecting him as the adopted candidate of BJD. A confused Swain had also to campaign for Raut, who, as a contesting candidate, had no confidence that he would win.

When the results came out and Raut was declared the winner, majority of Athgarh voters knew that they were defeated; because they had never voted for Raut. Manipulation of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) by lobbyists of American interest through expert miscreants helped Raut to win the way BJD in Orissa and Congress in the Center are suspected to have won, some say.

Congress leaders of Orissa know that the present Government is an outcome of EVM manipulation. But they are not in a position to say this resolutely as thereby their own party may be disadvantaged.

By the time of elections, Navin Patnaik has forfeited so much credibility that even the BJD General Secretary Dr. Damodar Raut in his journal “Sanchar” had highlighted how soiled had become the “Belgium Glass” meaning Navin’s clean face!

Demoralization had crippled the Government so much that it was seen shying at the Assembly and evading the House.

Goons donning attires of power positions were looting every welfare project, ample instances of which were gushing out of sample audits by the Comptroller and Auditor General.

Apolitical organizations including the World Health Organization were showing how public money was being swindled sans qualms as Navinraj was providing the swindlers with the environment they needed.

Occasions were there when even the Supreme Court had to strip the Navinraj layer by layer in cases of its imprudent patronization to mines-mongers.

Peoples were eating stones to thrive a while even as mothers were distress-selling babies, girls were distress-selling bodies, farmers were distress-selling paddies, workers were becoming bonded and distress-selling labor, self-employed cultivators were getting displaced as Navinraj’s priority was put on private industrial projects.

Majority of the peoples in Orissa were in unbearable distress and were just waiting to avenge all the humiliation and harassment Navinraj had put them to.

It is therefore next to impossible to accept that this tortured majority voted for Navin to form the government again.

How then the BJD grabbed majority berths in Orissa?

A genuine impartial commission of inquiry can find out the truth.

But those who did not vote for BJD believe that the party grabbed the berths through manipulation of EVMs.

The congress that belittled Indian democracy by allying with President Bush, as he then was, of USA in the matter of nuke deal as well as non-alignment and in anti-constitutional partnership with the unscrupulous private trade and industry, had no chance of electoral victory as majority of Indian voters is still not devoid of patriotism. How then it emerged as the single largest berth grabber in the Loksabha?

Majority of Indians suspect that EVM manipulation played the tricks.

Exposures in global media make one understand that Americans have quite a number of expert EVM manipulators. A study conducted by Princeton University researchers had stated that New Jersey’s electronic voting system could be easily hacked about seven minutes and researchers were sure in the report that this exploit could be practically undetectable. Numerous studies have shown that it would be easy to introduce malicious software into e-voting machines and sway an election. According to the findings of a 2007 top-to-bottom review of the voting systems in California, electronic voting machines are not secure. After finding a number of security vulnerabilities in all of the e-voting machines analyzed, Secretary of State Debra Bowen had significantly restricted the use of such systems in the state, limiting them to one per polling place, only to be used by handicapped persons.

So, in USA, expertise has grown to hack EVMs to hijack elections and the administration there has marked it.

In India, the EVMs were also marked for vulnerability to manipulations and when some such instances of manipulations transpired, on specific allegations, the Election Commission had, on December 19, 2005, appointed a committee headed by Prof P V Indersen to find out if results in EVM could be manipulated and the committee in it’s report submitted in September 2006 had confirmed that manipulation was possible and had therefore suggested some measures to check hijacking of elections through EVM.

But the Central Government did not implement the suggestions.

This being the position, Congress in the Center as well as BJD in Orissa that have surprised the voters with unexpected success in fetching berths are being looked at askance even as no agency has exposed this aspect specifically so far.

Lack of exposure by any agency confirms that there is no rivalry amongst manipulation agencies in this matter. This precipitates apprehensions that a single agency, howsoever unseen it be, had engaged EVM manipulators to organize electoral victory for both the Congress and the BJD.

Both these parties, though seemingly political opponents, are of similar inner character. When Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi of the Congress are known for their pro-USA economic stances, Navin of BJD is known as the patron of POSCO that the world looks at in the rays of America.

So there is no reason not to apprehend that lobbyists of American interest to whom power in hands of Manmohan and Navin at New Delhi and Orissa respectively would look more desirable, have no role in their electoral victory through EVM manipulation.

If they have done it, they have done it in such a manner that the dull minds may not mark the mischief.

This mischief might have specifically been employed at Athgarh.

The peoples of this constituency comprising the two famous ex-States namely Athgarh and Tigiria are the peoples whom legendary freedom fighter and revolutionary Braja Kishore Pattanayak was eager to represent in the Assembly. They are the peoples who are marked for having sent to the Assembly some of Orissa’s political top brass of their time such as Radhanath Rath, Pabitra Mohan Pradhan and Janaki Ballav Pattanaik, who were proud to have represented these peoples. Raut was never known to them as a political person having even an iota of political potency. He was not known to have any education, experience and / or ability to play any noteworthy role in law making and making the government function and remain answerable. Why at all should the same peoples have found in him the stuff fit enough to represent them in the Assembly and, that too, by rejecting experienced and capable stalwarts!

A former member of Rajyasabha as well as a former Chief Engineer of Works, each at his level having enough parliamentary and executive experiences were in the fray besides a BJP candidate in this 99 plus percent Hindu dominated constituency.

In this constituency there was no possibility of a man like Raut bagging victory. If here only Raut could win that should make it clear that peoples’ confidence in Navin was so solid that a political nongrata planted by him as an adopted candidate could vanquish heavyweight rivals. That may wipe out doubts, if any, over the unexpected massive victory of BJD.

This is how Raut represents Athgarh. But shenanigans following his victory in the election are such that peoples’ confidence in democracy has been affected more severely than that by suspected EVM manipulation.

Raut on 20th June handed over his single-sentence resignation letter to the Assembly Speaker at Bhubaneswar in total disregard to whatever votes he might have got under Navin’s dazzling publicity blitzkrieg and vanished into underground. Even as media made speculations that he was shanghaied into Swain’s secret den wherefrom his release was not possible before acceptance of his resignation, news spread that he had expressed in writing to withdraw his resignation. Police search parties were pressed on him and even as his family continued to air apprehensions on his life and the Speaker had to issue a summon on him warranting his appearance by 5th July, he surfaced on 4 July 2009 to confirm to the Speaker in his official chamber his withdrawal of resignation and to say that he wants to continue as a member.

By then the political environment of Orissa was already under stench that the shocking silence of the Chief Minister over disappearance of his adopted winner from Athgarh was emitting.

It was emerging that Swain was subjected to a well planned jettisoning by Navin as he was a man who despite being in the treasury bench had no hesitation in castigating the administration in the floor of the Assembly for the marked instances of misrule. He was deliberately not provided with the ticket till the last day of filing of nomination. Selected BJD supporters who filed the nomination papers projecting Swain as the party candidate did not file a genuine ticket. The party boss did not convey to the Returning Officer that Swain was the candidate of BJD. As the nomination papers were rejected, BJD did not raise objections against that; but Raut was readily adopted. Even as Swain has been fighting a case against alleged illegality in rejection of his nomination, Navin kept mum over the resignation and disappearance of Raut in a manner that helped spreading speculations projecting Swain as the villain. The Speaker personally had received the resignation. The way time elapsed without any discernible action at his end, peoples started suspecting that he was perhaps under pressure not to accept the same.

Both the august offices of the CM and the Speaker are lowered in public esteem in this matter. The way BJD’s adopted member has played havoc with democratic dignity is so baffling that Navin who enjoys to be described as the Supremo of his party should explain as to why he had found Raut qualified for his party support and why the votes of Athgarh should not be subjected to public audit to prove that public support to him in Orissa is so real that a man like Raut could win on his goodwill. Another aspect of this sordid drama is that Raut has revealed that Swain through his goons has been insisting that he should refund him the amount of Rs. Two crores that he had invested in his election with the hope that he would vacate the seat for him soon after results were declared. There should be an inquiry to ascertain the truth in this averment as it indicates the bribe given to voters, whosoever besides EVM manipulation if any had voted for Raut.

There should be no doubt over how this event has drastically damaged peoples’ confidence in applied democracy in Orissa. The Assembly should rise to restore peoples’ confidence in right earnest as otherwise the set of members that are supposed to steer the State for next five years may be viewed as enemies of democracy for all times to come.

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