THE letter of the Election Commission (EC) to Congress President Mr. Mallikarjun Kharge damning his letter to different leaders of Opposition camp about low voter turn-out under the guise of seeking their views, exposes the attempts to somehow bring to fore the issue which the Opposition loves to call a ‘failed democracy’. The EC has taken a strong exception to Mr. Kharge’s implication that the (so-called) delay in releasing the voter turn-out data by the poll body was an attempt to doctor the final outcome of the elections. The EC has described Mr. Kharge’s letter as an attempt to spread confusion, misdirection and impediment to the conduct of smooth, free and fair elections and heap on the society a “biased narrative”. If on one hand the Opposition is trying to malign India’s democratic credentials, United States Ambassador to India Mr. Eric Garcetti has dismissed once again in just a few weeks the allegations of a failed democracy. ‘Indians are better than the Americans in many ways’, he is reported to have said at an event organised by the prestigious American think-tank Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Garcetti had stressed this point a few weeks ago and had praised India’s successful democratic experiment and experience.

 

Of course, this double rebuff -- by the Election Commission as well as by the US Ambassador -- to the Opposition is not going to alter its stance in its electoral contest at hand. It is absolutely unlikely that the Congress party which Mr. Kharge heads or other parties in the Opposition grouping would ever want to mend their ways upon the reprimand from the Election Commission. For, having realised that they have been left with no philosophical position to take against the Narendra Modi Government, the Opposition parties have decided to create issues -- howsoever false -- about Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi’s democratic credentials. Out of that strategy has also stemmed the narrative that the Prime Minister proposes to alter the Constitution if he returns to power with 400-plus seats in his kitty. The obvious attempt of the Opposition was to seize the initiative by forcing the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on backfoot. Though the NDA did not get pushed to backfoot, it had to engage much of its energy in knocking out the Opposition allegations, all right.

 

This success did give the Opposition some energy to keep harping on its biased and often false narrative. No matter that, it is common knowledge that the Opposition has actually not gained anything concrete out of this attempt to slap on the country a wrong narrative that actually makes no head-or-tail. Much to the contrary, the Opposition lost a lot of its ground due to this biased narrative that did not conform to truth and went tangential to the overall national perception on most issues. The rebuff by the EC and the US Ambassador is good enough an indication that the Opposition continues to lose much of its ground due to its wrong stance on issues of critical national and international importance. Despite the fact that its leaders know that they are pursuing a wrong path, the Opposition does not seem to mend its ways. This leads us to an obvious inference -- that the Opposition is trying to carry forward an agenda whose goal travels much beyond the realm and outcome of the current Lok Sabha elections.