Will Rahul Gandhi's 'vote chori' claims shake BJP's core voter base? Bihar Assembly polls holds the key

As Opposition leaders are sharpening their charge of 'vote chori' (electoral theft), the question being discussed in political circles is whether such claims can shake the Bharatiya Janata Party’s formidable voter base. Analysts suggest that the answer may lie in the results of Bihar Assembly elections, which will proportionately show its impact. For the Opposition, it has turned the state into a testing lab for its freshly found narrative.

However, the BJP’s core constituency comprising nationalists, staunch Hindutva supporters, and those invested in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s persona, has historically remained intact through multiple opposition storms. Fierce farmer agitation from 2020-21, inflation, economic distress, or even pandemic mismanagement did little to dent this bloc.

Though allegations of vote chori have created a whiff of doubt even in the BJP supporters this time. But, many of them still brush it aside as Opposition propaganda and say it is not backed by hard, irrefutable evidence. Chandra Bhushan Kumar, living in Patna, says that he cannot distrust the revered independent institute of the country just because the Opposition is saying.

Many middle-class BJP voters, especially in urban India, continue to see the Election Commission (EC) as a credible institution. For them, India’s elections are among the most trustworthy in the developing world. In hardcore BJP rural areas, unless the Opposition can demonstrate constituency-level evidence of manipulation far and wide, the allegations may fail to penetrate to the NDA pockets.

Therefore, the real contest lies in the pockets of floating voters. These include a fraction of Dalits, minorities, Other Backward Classes (OBCs), and the urban poor who have the history of swinging between parties in the past decade and the voters who cast their vote on prevalent issues. Although many of them bend towards the BJP due to caste alignments, welfare schemes, and Modi’s popularity, their support is not guaranteed.

Ankur Singh, 32, who lives in Patna and has been voting for the BJP, says that the JDU-BJP government hasn’t been able to perform at several fronts, and therefore, he would like to vote for a party other than the NDA. “I haven’t thought which party to vote yet,” Singh says, “I have not read about voter fraud yet, my friend who has also been voting for the BJP says he will also not vote for the BJP this time.”

Moreover, if selective deletions, missing names from rolls, and shifting of polling booths are directly shown to disenfranchised people, the charge could play a dominant role.

Thus, in Bihar, even a slight change in voter sentiment could shift margins and decide outcomes for the Opposition, who are dominating the narrative scene, without necessarily eroding the BJP’s core base.

In the last Assembly election in 2020, nearly 85 seats were such that they were decided by margins of fewer than 10,000 votes. Out of the 74 seats the BJP won, 16 assembly seats were secured with a margin of less than 10,000 votes. The Janata Dal (United), its ally, was in an even more challenging position: out of 43 seats it had won, 13 of its victories came by margins of under 5,000 votes. In such a landscape, allegations of vote chori can create an impression overshadowing the BJP’s campaign to a large extent. Swing voters, particularly Dalits, OBCs, and the poor, could make all the difference.

Indian politics has seen similar campaigns before. During the 1977 Emergency, Indira Gandhi was accused of undermining the credibility of institutions, which created a wave of moral outrage aiding the opposition, the Janata Party. More recently, in 2019, discussion about Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) tampering was established against the BJP but lacked credibility and failed to dent the BJP’s majority.