Tactics in poll war: Dummy names, superstitions, missing voters

MUMBAI: Turns out, digging out dirt on rival candidates and indulging in public spats are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to tactics politicians resort to in the election race. From putting up dummy namesake candidates to meddling with voters’ lists and following superstitions to the tee, political parties are deploying strategies beyond campaigning to beat their rivals in the poll war.

The most common and age old strategy being fielding namesakes. It has been proven that namesakes who contest as Independents are the reason for the fall of many popular leaders as it confuses voters. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, this tactic proved to be a spoiler for candidates in two constituencies. Last general elections, Shiv Sena’s Anant Geete, who is a Union minister now, defeated senior NCP leader Sunil Tatkare in Raigad constituency by a wafer thin margin of 2,110 votes.

Interestingly, Tatkare’s namesake, an Independent candidate, bagged 9,849 votes. Tatkare, while talking to TOI, agreed that the Independent candidate cost him dear. “Yes, it’s true that the namesake cost me the seat. This time, we have taken care of these factors,” said Tatkare, who is again up against Geete.

In Hingoli too, namesakes had spoiled the game for Shiv Sena’s candidate Subhash Wankhede in 2014. He lost by 1,632 votes to Congress’s Rajeev Satav. His two namesakes had managed to get more than 6,000 votes each. For this election, Wankhede has crossed over to the Congress and is contesting from Hingoli again. On Saturday, TOI had reported about five of his namesakes being in the race but by Tuesday, the number had gone up to eight.

“This is one of most effective ways of confusing voters,” said a BJP party worker.

Nanded this time will see two Ashokrao Shankarao Chavans in the fray—one is the Congress candidate and the other is an Independent.

In 2014, PWP leader Meenakshi Patil lost assembly polls in Alibaug as six other Meenakshi Patil’s were in the fray.

Another trick that political observers said is employed by politicians is not distributing voters slips in several areas or making names of voters disappear from lists. The issue of missing voters was highlighted by former judge and national general secretary of JD (S) BG Kolse-Patil at a press conference recently. He has alleged that the ruling party, BJP, is manipulating voters list in the state as about 40 lakh names have gone missing; majority of them are Dalits and Muslims, who are not BJP’s traditional voters.

The more conservative candidates rely on superstitions. Also, there are those who do not want to indulge in anything away from the tradition. “The nimbu-mirchi that we hang in our party office is thrown outside the rival’s party office to divert negative energies towards them,” said a party worker.