10th May - 2008 Assembly Elections in Karnataka

Election time is back. Karnataka has been in President’s rule since October 2007. Prior to that we’d witnessed a series of comic scenes. I can vouch that if similar sequences were included in any movie, it will flop miserably because even for comic movies there’s certain logic that people expect. I’ve been always a great fan of David Dhawan and Govinda and I always debate that their movies are just for fun and you shouldn’t look for logic and story line. But now I feel their movies make better sense than what happened in Karnataka. Look at this. Dharam Singh of Congress becomes the Chief Minister of Karnataka, after the fractured verdict in the 2004 Assembly elections, with support from Devegowda (the humble farmer whose grandson rides one of the few HUMMER cars in India). After sometime Devegowda withdrew support and Dharam’s ministry crunbles. Now Devegowda’s son, Kumaraswamy, goes against his illustrious dad, garners support from BJP (the single largest party in 2004 election) and forms a coalition government with the condition that he and Yediyurappa will share the chair of Chief Ministership, with him taking the chair first. And hence starts the second innings of coalition government. There are lots of hand crafted drama of father-son clashes between HD Devegowda and HD Kumaraswamy. Now comes the climax. When it’s turn for Yediyurappa to take CM’s chair, Kumaraswamy, now reunited with his dad, wants to call off the game. This reminds me of our cricket matches in childhood when we used to call off the match, citing many silly excuses, immediately after our batting used to be over so that we won’t have to field!! Anyway, after lot of commotion finally President’s rule was declared and we’ve been under Rameshwar Thakur’s governorship for the past six months.

I believe anyone would recall that since T N Session’s tenure the role of Chief Election Commissioner of India has been very crucial. The CEOs have been acting like head masters and even the strongest of politicians never want to take pangs with them. Things have really improved. I feel good that there’s at least something that the politicians fear.

Now we’re able to see the complete voter list for any constituency in any part of India online. I consider that really a great achievement for India. This is a database of all eligible voters in India and everything is online and accessible to anyone.

The CEO’s home page for Karnataka is http://ceokarnataka.kar.nic.in/indexw.asp. I was not aware of my constituency. I searched for my name and got all details about my constituency, candidates etc. The link for the search engine is http://164.100.80.122/Search/

The affidavits filed by each contestant have been meticulously scanned and uploaded. I checked out the affidavit filed by Kumaraswamy. The last page shows his wife’s assets as Rs. 21crores!! Wow, that’s the daughter in law of a humble farmer!!

Ever since we managed to get our Voter’s ID card we never missed to exercise our rights. I never tried to hide that I consider BJP as the better devil compared to all others and hence I’ve been voting for them forever. I still remember that first time I voted in my life in 1995 for some municipal election in Calcutta I was looking for the BJP candidate’s name. The people in the polling booth were shocked at my open question. The officer asked me to check the second page as the names spilled across multiple pages. Later I knew from my dad that the BJP candidate’s deposit was confiscated as he didn’t even get the minimum votes. Such is my loyalty towards BJP. This time I found the BJP candidate’s name against the very first press-button. I believe the names were arranged alphabetically as per the names of the parties. Not to mention that I pressed the 1^st button. My wife also did the same. My 5 year old kid Hrishav was with my wife when she pressed the 1^st button. He, being very inquisitive, asked loudly why she pressed the 1^st button and not the other ones!! Again the people in the polling booth looked up at us!!

Well, I hope I can look up to the person I voted for!!