Unopposed Outrage

Few phrases in Indian politics are abused as casually as “murder of democracy.” Yet, Maharashtra’s Opposition, notably Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT) and his cousin Raj Thackeray’s MNS, has reached for precisely that charge after a rash of candidates from the ruling BJP–Shiv Sena Mahayuti alliance were declared elected unopposed in recent municipal elections in Thane district. Nearly half of all unopposed winners across the state come from one district and all belong to parties in power. The reaction to this has been noisy, with the MNS threatening agitation with dark hints of intimidation and inducement, and demands that even a lone candidate must face the people through a NOTA button.

Taking cognizance, the State Election Commission has rightly sought reports from district collectors on whether withdrawals were coerced or nominations wrongly rejected. If officials misused their authority, punishment should be swift.

But outrage is a poor substitute for logic. Unopposed elections are not an invention of the EC nor a constitutional aberration. They are an accepted, if undesirable, outcome when rival candidates fail to file valid nominations or choose to withdraw. The Election Commission cannot conjure contestants out of thin air. Its role is to ensure that the process is lawful, not to guarantee a contest in every ward. To ask what the EC is supposed to do if only one candidate remains is to answer one’s own question: it must declare that candidate elected, subject to due verification. Anything else would be arbitrary.

This is where the opposition’s case collapses into theatre. Shiv Sena (UBT) and the MNS are not protesting an unknown rule suddenly sprung upon them. They are protesting the consequences of organisational weakness, poor candidate management and a failure to defend nominations on the ground. Threatening election officials or promising to “welcome” alleged traitors after the polls only reinforces the impression of parties more comfortable with intimidation than introspection.

The demand for a NOTA option even when there is a single candidate is legally muddled. NOTA is a choice among candidates, not a mechanism to veto an election altogether. To introduce it midstream would require statutory change, and not street pressure. One might add that if NOTA were truly the opposition’s crusade, it would have been raised when it was in power or when unopposed elections favoured its own ranks.

There is also an inconvenient footnote that the loudest accusers would prefer to skip. Uddhav Thackeray himself entered the legislature as a Member of the Legislative Council without facing a contest. At the time, this was not portrayed as a betrayal of democracy but as a routine political accommodation. Evidently, unopposed elections are an outrage only when one is on the receiving end.

The Election Commission will establish with due procedure whether the line between persuasion and coercion was crossed. Until then, Maharashtra’s opposition is doing itself no favours by conflating every electoral setback with democratic apocalypse.