Five phase polls in Jharkhand due to Maoist violence or to give BJP an advantage?

The Election Commission of India announced on November 1 that elections in Jharkhand’s 81 Assembly constituencies will be held over five phases beginning from November 30. Counting of votes will take place on December 23.

In the first phase on November 30, voting will be held on 13 Assembly seats. Then, 20 constituencies will vote on December 7, 17 constituencies on December 12, 15 constituencies on December 16. In the fifth round, voting will take place for 16 Assembly seats on December 20 and the results will be out three days later.

“There were a lot of sensitivities in our mind…We should finish before Christmas (on December 25),” Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora said at a media briefing. Arora said the model code of conduct for political parties has kicked in for the state with this announcement.

The five-phase poll has been necessitated on account of Maoist violence in the state, the Election Commission said. Four out of every five Assembly constituencies in the state, a total of 67 constituencies, are affected by Maoist violence, Arora said, stressing that special security arrangements have been made for the state’s Maoist-affected districts.

The CEC’s justification for such prolonged elections in a relatively small state, however, flies in the face of claims made by Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das who on August 27 said that there had been a 60 per cent decrease in Maoist violence-related incidents in the state in the year 2019 in comparison with that of 2015.

He was speaking at a meeting of Left Wing Extremism (LWE)-affected states in Delhi.

Das had said that while the number of civilians being killed in Maoist violence had gone down to one third, the number of Maoists getting neutralised in encounters had doubled since 2015. He further informed that the number of surrenders had also doubled along with 33 per cent rise in the number of arms and ammunition recovered from the LWE groups.

The CM gave the example of Lok Sabha elections 2019, claiming that no Maoist violence was recorded in the state. He further said that, ‘the pace of anti-Maoist drive that had gone slow during elections had also achieved necessary acceleration in the last two-three months.’

Das said that personnel of the Special Task Force (STF) — Jharkhand Jaguar — have been given special training and equipment to make the unit self-dependent. Also, the number of Bomb Disposal Squad has been increased to 12 to help the security forces to detect landmines.

The CM further spoke about construction of rural roads in the state that help eliminate LWE from the affected regions. Das said that from 2001 to 2014, 22,248 kms rural roads were built, while since 2014, 22,865 kms of rural roads have been constructed. He said that the rural infrastructure is being developed speedily with the help of Centre in districts affected by Maoist violence.

He had concluded that ‘LWE was taking its last breath in the state’.

Some users took to microblogging site Twitter to heap sarcasm on the EC’s decision and question it, as reproduced below: