Opposition’s selective, baseless cries of ‘vote chori’ reflect their lack of political humility

Let us be honest from the very first sentence. Yogendra Yadav’s article (‘Some democratic lessons from Global South that our Opposition needs’, IE, July 7) is a pre-packaged alibi for political defeat — penned well before the ballot boxes are sealed so that an inevitable political surrender can be retroactively branded as a grand strategy.

Yadav asks, “Why bother with elections?” and flirts openly with the idea of a comprehensive Opposition boycott. He calls it a “good question but a bad answer”. The truth is, it is neither. It is the ultimate coping mechanism for a fragmented Opposition that has lost its connection to the Indian grassroots and now seeks refuge in the lexicon of institutional victimisation. Yadav claims that “uncertainty has disappeared from elections”. Translated from academic to political reality, this means: “Our side cannot win, so the entire system must be fraudulent.” This is the logic of a student who blames the unfairness of the question paper for an exam they failed to prepare for.

The core argument driving the Opposition’s current grievance narrative is that the political dominance of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Prime Minister Narendra Modi represents an unprecedented, structural death blow to competitive politics. This entire argument is questionable under the weight of empirical historical data.

In 1957, when the Congress party was at its peak under Jawaharlal Nehru, it held power in 12 out of 13 states — a staggering 92 per cent of all state governments — and commanded 371 out of 494 Lok Sabha seats (71 per cent). By comparison, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) holds approximately 55 per cent of the seats in the Lok Sabha and leads state governments in 18 out of the 31 states and Union Territories with legislative bodies, roughly 58 per cent. Further, let us look at the evolution of political choices and systemic competitiveness. In the 1957 general election, a mere 49 political parties participated. Now, the Election Commission of India (ECI) registers over 740 political parties fielding candidates.

To legitimise his narrative, Yadav selectively cites Adam Przeworski’s Why Bother With Elections? as if an academic smoking gun is uncovered. Yet, he conveniently omits Przeworski’s core assertion: Elections are the most successful mechanism for resolving deep societal conflicts peacefully and remain the single least-bad way of choosing rulers. More importantly, Przeworski’s theoretical framework was explicitly designed around the transition of volatile Latin American autocracies — not a mature republic like India. Similarly, Yadav parades Pippa Norris’s 11 dimensions of electoral integrity as an absolute gospel of Indian decline. But Norris’s papers have never classified India as a “failed” or “fixed” electoral system, and she has frequently noted the resilience of India’s voting mechanics.

The Opposition frequently quotes the V-Dem Institute — which dramatically downgraded India — but has only faced fierce methodology pushback from hundreds of global scholars for its heavy reliance on subjective, expert surveys prone to ideological confirmation bias. Yadav builds an entire case on a highly contested index, selective citations, and theories stripped of their context.

If the ECI is merely a “fixed authority”, why does the international community view it as a global benchmark? For seven decades under Congress, the Election Commission was appointed solely by the executive choice. This government reformed this, establishing a statutory selection panel that explicitly includes consultation with the Leader of the Opposition. The structural integrity of our process is why international bodies look to New Delhi for guidance. Just recently, Indonesia — the world’s third-largest democracy with over 200 million voters — formally sought to partner with India to develop and import customised Indian Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and adopt our election management model.

The noise surrounding the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter lists follows the same pattern. An accurate, duplicate-free voter roll is the foundation of a clean election. When the Opposition approached the Supreme Court alleging institutional “vote chori” during voter list revisions, the apex court thoroughly evaluated and dismissed the alarmist petitions. Chief Justice Surya Kant explicitly validated the field verification process.

Yadav’s central thesis completely disintegrates when confronted with the reality of the ballot box. If the system is an airtight, rigged autocracy, how did the opposition coalition expand its footprint so dramatically to secure 234 seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections?

Look at the most recent, concrete evidence from the 2026 assembly elections. Five major states went to the polls. If the electoral machinery were under the absolute administrative thumb of the ruling dispensation, the outcomes would be uniform. Instead, in a vibrant display of anti-incumbency and political fluidity, two out of those five states went directly to the Congress-led opposition. In Kerala, the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) swept into power with 97 out of 140 seats. Did the EVMs suddenly function perfectly/SIR exercise became satisfactory in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, only to be “rigged” in states where the BJP or its allies triumphed?

Yadav crosses a dangerous line when he compares India — a decentralised federal democracy of 1.4 billion people, featuring an independent judiciary and over 400 competitive media channels and newspapers — with Belarus, a state where political dissidents are routinely imprisoned, and Hungary, where the state maintains a monolithic grip on the press. India’s Supreme Court has repeatedly struck down some government policies and even intervened directly to overturn local municipal polls.

Yadav’s entire argument is also a profound insult to the 642 million citizens who cast their ballots in the recent general elections. With a staggering overall turnout even crossing 90 per cent (as in West Bengal), and women outvoting men in higher proportions than ever before, the Indian electorate proved they are conscious, trustworthy, active stakeholders. The current Opposition does not need tactical lessons imported from authoritarian regimes. It needs a basic lesson in political humility.

The writer is national spokesperson, Bharatiya Janata Party