‘We suffered a setback in Palghar due to division of antibjp votes’
Congress general secretary incharge of Maharashtra Mohan Prakash blamed the division of votes for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’S win in the Palghar Lok Sabha constituency. In an interview with Aurangzeb Naqshbandi,
he also called for a national campaign against the use of electronic voting machines or EVMS.
What are the reasons for your defeat in Palghar?
Our alliance partner, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) won Bhandara-gondiya, which was the prestigious Lok sabha seat for the BJP. The constituency borders the home districts of Union minister Nitin Gadkari and chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. We suffered a setback in Palghar because of the division of anti-bjp votes and desertion of our potential candidate to BJP.
You said BJP benefited from the division of votes in Palghar. Why couldn’t you prevent that?
We have seen wherever there is unity of opposition parties and no division of votes, the BJP has lost badly. Their vote share is less and they don’t have wider social acceptance but the way they fight the elections is significant. BJP used all means, including money, to defeat our candidate. There was a division of the opposition vote in Palghar as the CPI (Communist Party of India) and CPM (Communist Party of India-marxist) were also in the fray.
You have been demanding replacement of EVMS with ballot papers. Will you continue?
The EVMS are the secret to BJP’S electoral success. Every political party had voiced its concerns over the use of EVMS. Senior BJP leader LK Advani was the first to do express his doubts on the functioning of the EVMS. A BJP spokesman had even written a book on it. There are two arguments against reverting to the old practice of using ballot papers – that it will take time to count the votes and second that it encourages booth capturing. But when you can have note-counting machines why not votecounting machines? And in the times of mobile phones and CCTV cameras, booth capturing could be easily prevented. There is a need to launch a national campaign against the EVMS.
Is the Shiv Sena a potential ally for the Congress?
As of now, we are in alliance with NCP. There is one-upmanship going on between BJP and Shiv Sena. BJP doesn’t want to share power with its alliance partners and that is troubling the Shiv Sena.