Kohlapur/Gorakhpur: At the entry point into Karjah, Aima and Katrai villages, about 30 kilometres from Gorakhpur district headquarters, flies a banner prohibiting the entry of politicians asking for votes. Falling under Bansgaon Tehsil and going to the polls on May 19, the villagers have decided to boycott the polls because of the government’s decision to divert the Rapti river stream flowing past their villages. They fear the diversion of the Rapti stream will adversely affect over a thousand people living in these four villages, they say. Letters to the district administration and the chief minister have elicited no response.

“We know elections are the biggest festival in any democracy and this is the ripe time to raise our voices against the things being done against us,” said Om Prakash Shukla, former village headman of Karjah village, who even led a Jal Satyagraha to protest the river diversion plan. That same feeling saw voters in states like Assam, Maharashtra, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Chattisgarh refusing to vote in the four phases that have been completed so far.

The reasons varied from lack of basic amenities to poor implementation of projects and pollution. Be it villagers of Nagaraja Kandigai in Tamil Nadu who want an end to pollution of their locality by the local sponge iron plant, or those in Darupisa in Chhattisgarh who put up a banner outside the village, taking a dig at politicians and public representatives for the lack of basic amenities like drinking water, abstaining from voting is seen as the last, feeble resort against extended government apathy. According to a report, around 165 villages from 14 states announced their decision not to vote this time even before the first phase of polling began.

Gautam Bandyopadhyay, an activist working for electoral reforms and coordinator of Association of Democratic Reforms in Chhattisgarh, said, "People boycott elections to seek the attention of the government as they feel that voting is associated with developmental work. I think it is the way to start a dialogue with the authorities. The government should talk to its citizens and resolve their issues."

Whether a boycott serves a purpose beyond bringing media attention to their issues (and to what end) is open to debate. But every election, there are certainly a few angry voters who believe that the threat to boycott polls is the best way to get candidates and governments to take notice.

Unrelenting (non-)voters

Way down south from Gorakhpur, in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur constituency, 30,000 voters from 18 villages in the taluks of Radhanagari, Panhala and Gaganbavada also gave polling day a miss, protesting the total lack of progress on the Dhamami dam which was promised to them over 20 years ago. The project, comprising an earthen dam and canals and sanctioned in 1995, was meant to ameliorate the area’s perennial water scarcity. With a budget of Rs 120 crore, the project, supposed to irrigate 1500 hectares with the dam having a capacity of 3.85 TMC ft, was revised twice – in 2000 which raised the budget to Rs 382 crore and again in 2016 with a revised budget of Rs 728 crore. But the project remains incomplete with issues like rehabilitation and payments to contractors still unresolved.

On January 26, the villagers decided that they would boycott the elections and informed the Chief Minister, Governor and district collector. The district collector Gautam Desai tried to prevent the boycott by setting up meetings with officials from the irrigation department, land acquisition department, rehabilitation department and water resources department with the Dhamani Valley Action Committee. He also assured the committee that work on the project will resume by October, but the action committee did not relent. “I had sent a personal open letter to all villagers to come and vote and distributed the letters to approximately 5,000 homes in these villages,” he added.

“The district collector met with the villagers, but we are frustrated and we will not vote till the project starts,” said Tanaji Kamble, a member of the Dhamani Valley Development Action Committee. “The work has been going on for 19 years. Now we are left with only one solution, which is to boycott elections.” The villagers feel that they have to fight for everything. They had to fight to get the dam sanctioned, and they had to fight to keep it going.

We visited the project site at Rai village in Radhanagari taluka where 90 families have been displaced. They have been rehabilitated in two colonies on the upper side of the mountain and have been allotted residential plots and agricultural land near the mountains. The two colonies are almost complete but lack basic amenities like roads, sewerage and schools. “I had 10 acres of land, but I agreed to move since the authorities promised me eight acres, but till date, nothing has happened,” said Tukaram Jingare, a displaced resident of Rai village. “We lost everything -- our ancestral home and agricultural lands. We are left with no income source. I earn my livelihood by working as a daily wage labourer.”

Back in UP

The villagers along Rapti in Gorakhpur have not been reduced to that state yet, but displacement is definitely on their mind as they plan to boycott elections when the constituency goes to poll last on May 19. Nikku Yadav, 24, a youth from the village who participated in the Jal Satyagraha said the diversion will affect the lives of more than 10,000 people from the surrounding villages. “We will not let them change the stream of the river at any cost,” said Nikku Yadav.

When asked if the administration had sent emissaries to convince them to vote, he says “Not even a single officer has visited us but they are pressuring us through police and other senior officials of the district.” Added Ram Prakash Nishad, “The district magistrate has been assuring us that the work has been stopped but the machines deployed by them are still digging the earth.” But Gorakhpur’s district magistrate Vijendra Pandiyan said that it was not a diversion but in fact a dredging scheme which has now been postponed to next year because of the protests by villagers. “The administration will not do anything without the consent of villagers,” he assured. “Our officials are trying to convince the villagers not to boycott the elections.”

But the residents here are convinced that the government is lying to them and under the guise of dredging, the stream is being diverted to benefit a local mining baron. Gorakhpur based activist Manoj Singh also insists that the government is misleading and Magsaysay award winner and water conservation expert Rajendra Singh, who has lent his support for the protest, says that changing the course of the river will adversely affect the environment.

When contacted, the BJP candidate from Gorakhpur, Ravi Kishan told us he wouldn’t shy away from visiting these villages. “I am not afraid of getting beaten up or being shooed away,” he said, adding “I will go there to tell them that I stand with their cause and will talk to the senior authorities about this matter. I will not make any false promises.”

The right to boycott

Considering abysmal turnouts in big metros like Mumbai and Bengaluru where barely half the population voted, there has been a debate on whether voting must be made mandatory. But boycotts in India are older than its democracy. In 1920, the British sought to set up a legislative council, which would have 70 per cent of its members elected by the Indian people. While justice, peace and land revenue would be reserved for the British Governor and his council, other administrative areas were to be handled by the elected Indian representatives. Protesting against this proposal, Mahatma Gandhi, supported by the Muslim League, called for a boycott of the elections as the elected representatives would not represent the will of the people as they would have to function under British laws.

In MP, which is seeing it's fair share of election boycotts this time including villages in Dindori and few in Shahdol during the fourth phase, Abhijeet Agarwal, Joint Chief Electoral Officer of Madhya Pradesh, has close experience of managing problems such as call of boycott election in collaboration with district officials. He said, "We have observed that normally local issues lead to election boycott and it affects a small area only. Our first priority in such cases is to send a team to convince voters that voting is their right and they must use it. People think that if they boycott voting the commission have to reorganise the poll, but that is not true. Boycotting an election is never going to help them as voting is their right and if they do not vote the commission will not conduct repolling."

Also, the demands of the voters are not always reasonable. Agarwal says, "I think every government official wants development in their areas but some problems are just beyond their capabilities. Sometimes the voters are misguided by some people as recently we faced boycott calls in Tikamgarh district in Madhya Pradesh, where some people came with a sudden demand of a project which the district administration was unaware of. We have seen demands of canals and big projects in Shahdol and Dindori districts which need a lot of time and a proper process. It is very difficult to convince people as we cannot promise them about projects when the Model Code of Conduct is in effect. We try to convince them by explaining their rights as a citizen. If they are not happy with any candidate they may go for the NOTA option."

Ultimately, Bandyopadhyay feels that participation in democracy is very important and boycotting the election is not the solution. "NOTA (None of the Above) was introduced to bring people to the polling booth even if they do not like any candidate. Before NOTA, it was very difficult to assess how many people are active in democracy. Our goal is to make people aware of their rights and encourage them to participate in democracy," he added.

But NOTA needs to be given more teeth to make it a favourable alternative to outright boycotts. Since the Supreme Court directed the introduction on None of the Above in 2013, a small number of India voters have come to see it as an instrument of protest. But to inspire more people to use it, NOTA must provide for a ‘right to reject’. Because right now, the candidate with the maximum votes wins the election irrespective of the number of NOTA votes polled. A PIL, seeking the full right to reject in place of NOTA, was filed in 2016 and is pending in the Madras High Court.

With inputs from Manish Chandra Mishra.

[The authors are all part of 101Reporters]