Ballot Brutality

Maharashtra has just delivered a troubling paradox. The same state that conducted a largely peaceful Lok Sabha election and a hard-fought Assembly poll without disorder now cannot manage violence-free municipal elections. On Tuesday, as voting began across the long-awaited 264 municipal councils and nagar panchayats, the democratic ritual was quickly overshadowed by stone-pelting, vandalism, bogus-voting allegations and open clashes between workers of the very parties that rule the state together. If big elections can pass peacefully, why has grassroots democracy turned into a street battle?

Nearly one crore voters were eligible to choose representatives for 6,042 seats and 264 municipal heads. Instead of routine democracy, Maharashtra got a travelling circus of clashes between workers of the BJP, Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar’s NCP who, while, partners in the ruling Mahayuti at the State level, transformed into street-level adversaries armed with sticks, stones and political impunity at places where they contested separately.

From Gevrai in Beed to Roha and Mahad in Raigad, from Jalgaon to Sangli, Hingoli to Nandurbar, violence chased voters from one booth to another. An SUV was smashed in broad daylight. An elderly candidate was assaulted in Parbhani. In Hingoli, a sitting MLA was caught on video entering a polling booth while a woman voted. In Buldhana, suspected bogus voters had to be physically caught by Congress workers.

The Bombay High Court’s directive to postpone counting, fearing that early results might influence later phases, has added a judicial footnote to a political mess. If India can manage peaceful parliamentary elections involving nearly a billion voters, why can Maharashtra not conduct municipal polls without lathi-charges?

The responsibility for this squarely rests with the power-packed troika of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and his deputies, Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar, whose parties govern the State. Each controls a formidable cadre network. Each routinely lectures the opposition on law and order. Yet when their own workers clash across half of Maharashtra, it appears that the ruling alliance has lost operational control over its own foot soldiers or, more disturbing still, has chosen not to exercise it.

Local-body elections in Maharashtra are not small beer. They control contracts, cash flows, patronage networks and the political oxygen that sustains regional satraps. This is precisely why Mahayuti allies fought one another as ferociously as they confronted the opposition. The cost is being paid by voters made to run a gauntlet to exercise their franchise.

Maharashtra’s ruling leaders like to present the state as India’s industrial engine and reform laboratory. Yet its municipal elections resemble the bad old caricature of Indian politics.

Maharashtra’s rulers like to speak the language of stability and governance. But stability cannot be claimed in air-conditioned press rooms and abandoned at the polling booth. If the Chief Minister and his deputies cannot enforce discipline among their own allies in local elections, then their authority over the wider state machinery is a carefully curated illusion.