What BJP Winning Seats Unopposed Reveals About Elections Under Modi

Facing prison and other legal threats, some opposition candidates withdrew in the national parliamentary elections

June 1, 2024

Some foreign journalists and independent political analysts, covering the current national parliamentary elections in India, appear to have missed the new tactics pursued by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

They point out that the polling, which concluded today, was largely free and fair and will reflect Modi’s popularity and a weak opposition. “Modi’s BJP is set to win its third straight five-year term thanks to his potent, populist mix of economic empowerment and Hindu nationalism” and an increasingly weak opposition, CNN reported.

Such analysis overlooks the BJP’s apparent adoption of methods used by authoritarian rulers to win re-elections.  

As during the last national election in 2019, there are numerous recent reports of BJP activists and police turning away voters who supported the opposition. But now such blunt, public actions can be exposed using smartphones.

In fact, a video, obtained by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, shows a BJP leader’s election strategy in the state of Uttar Pradesh. In the video, shot in April, the leader tells party members, "Do not use violence…don't physically assault anyone. You just need to create a fake scene so there will be chaos, so women will stop coming to polling station.” To get the police to block opposition supporters from voting, the BJP leader added, “give them money as per their position, 500 [rupees] for officials and 100 [rupees] for juniors…saying this is for tea only, not for anything else."

Apparently, BJP’s national leaders sought to avoid the circulation of more such videos, since they hurt Modi’s global image of having strong popular support in India.

Instead, BJP officials reportedly pursued a new tactic of pressuring key opposition candidates to withdraw from contesting parliamentary seats. Last month, for instance, an opposition candidate for the Indore seat in Madhya Pradesh state, withdrew and joined the BJP. This was after a murder charge was added to a 2007 land dispute court case against him.

In Surat, Gujerat state, the BJP candidate was elected unopposed since all eight opposition candidates dropped out of the contest. After the last remaining opposition candidate went into hiding, police raided the home of the leader of his party. A police official told The Washington Post, that the house was raided following a tip the leader “was illegally storing alcohol in his home.” The candidate, who was found by BJP officials, also withdrew from contesting the parliamentary seat. He has since gone into hiding again, according to news reports.

Prior to the current election, the BJP sought to use prison and other legal threats against opposition leaders before they announced their candidacy. From 2014 - when Narendra Modi first became Prime Minister – till 2022, opposition leaders accounted for roughly 95% of the 121 politicians investigated by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), a government investigative agency, according to a study by the Indian Express.  

This was a four-fold increase compared to ED investigations during the previous Congress Party led government’s rule from 2004 to 2014. Equally important, only half of the 26 investigations involved opposition leaders.

Since the 2022 Indian Express study, several more opposition leaders have faced investigations or been imprisoned by the ED. Early this year, weeks before the national elections were announced, six of the 25 opposition politicians facing ED investigations moved to the BJP, according to the Indian Express.

In January, in one prominent case, Nitish Kumar, the Chief Minister of Bihar, switched from opposing to supporting the BJP. Kumar is the leader of some backward castes in the electorally crucial state which accounts for 40 of the 543 parliamentary seats.

Adam Ziegfeld, an expert on Indian politics at Temple University, United States, told the Washington Post, that the use of law enforcement or trumped-up cases came “out of the tool kit of electoral autocrats…This is about who gets scared off from running. If you look at who [Russian President Vladimir] Putin lets run against him, it’s no wonder he wins.”