In the hotly contested Bihar polls, 614 nominations out of a total of 4,463 were rejected by electoral officers, and not a single one of them came from either the ruling alliance or the parties leading the opposition. Election officials rejected the nominations of many first-time candidates, including those from activist backgrounds or from marginalised communities. Activists told me these rejections were based on very flimsy grounds, and that electoral officers were hostile to grassroot candidates but helpful to those from parties that have been in power. On 26 October, two days before the state went to polls, many first-time candidates I approached told me they had lost hope in the credibility of the election process.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and Janata Dal (United), as well as the opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal and Congress, have all previously promised and failed to address unemployment, rural distress. They have also failed to properly implement welfare schemes. As a result, several grassroot leaders, many from activist backgrounds, hoped to contest the election. Many stood as independents, and some had the backing of two newly established political parties, the New Bharat Mission and the Plurals Party. The NBM is a grassroot party founded by Ashok Priyadarshi and Pankaj, both land-reform activists. Two of the party’s ten nominees, including Priyadarshi, were rejected over small errors that election help desks could have corrected and rectified themselves. An Election Commission guideline titled, “Checklist for Returning Officers,” available on their website says that returning officers need “to be liberal in overlooking minor technical or clerical errors.”
The Plurals Party was founded this year and fielded several candidates who are local activists from marginalised communities. The Plurals Party has the largest number of rejected nominations in this election. “On the flimsiest grounds, election officers across Bihar rejected the nomination of 38 candidates from the total 184 candidates we fielded,” Anupam Suman, the party’s general secretary, told me. Among the Plurals candidates whose nominations were rejected are Manikant Yadav and Sushma Hembram.
Yadav is an activist who had previously served as the headman of Bahraich panchayat in northern Bihar. The Plurals Party had given Yadav a ticket for the Haya Ghat constituency. “The returning officer had told me a day before the nomination deadline that my nomination form and affidavits were perfectly filled,” Yadav told me. “However, on 21 October, the deadline, even before my nomination rejection order was issued to me, I was told my nomination rejection is finalised because one column was not properly filled. My nomination rejection was clearly unfair.” When I contacted VN Chaudhry, the Haya Ghat returning officer, to ask about Yadav’s nomination rejection, he said, “Don’t seek any clarification from me. Seek clarification from ECI.”
Hembram, an Adivasi activist who used to run self-help groups among her community, got the Plurals Party ticket to stand from the Katoria constituency, which is reserved for Scheduled Tribes. Suman told me that Ranjan K Chaudhry, the Katoria returning officer, had given Hembram a checklist of bank account details she had to file. “She produced the details on time before her nomination deadline, 11 am on 9 October,” Suman said. “But she was made to queue up to enter the office and they rejected her nomination saying she missed her deadline by entering the office at 11.01 am.” Suman said that the party was being selectively targeted. Chaudhry did not respond to multiple calls.
“Our spirits have not broken yet only because we trust the public to support us,” Suman told me. “The loss of candidates can’t be overcome but such things are bound to happen when an evil design created by the nexus between election officers and big parties dominates the election process.” Suman told me that the party had challenged the rejection of Yadav’s nomination with the Election Commission.
Ashok Priyadarshi, one of the founders of the NBM, is an activist who has been fighting for land redistribution in Bihar’s Gaya district since the early 1970s in the heyday of the JP movement. The JP movement was a student-led movement in Bihar in the 1970s, initiated by the political activist Jayaprakash Narayan, which fought against feudal landlords and corruption by leaders of the Congress “In 1995, while we were lacking a leadership in our fight for land rights in Gaya, Priyadarshi’s guidance gave us the leadership we needed and strength to continue our fight,” MK Nirala, a rural activist from Dobhi village in Gaya, told me. “Along with many other villages he settled in Gaya district, he settled two villages in Dobhi—Vahini Nagar and Loknayak Jaiprakash Nagar. This was a historic move.” During his several decade-long fight for land reform in Bihar, Priyadarshi has constantly butted heads with consecutive governments of both the JD(U) and the RJD, as well as the state’s bureaucratic machinery.
On 17 October, Shashi Shekhar, the returning officer for Bankipur, rejected Priyadarshi’s nomination for the seat. “When Shashi Shekhar rejected Priyadarshi’s nomination mere hours before the deadline, we sought clarification from him,” Manoj Kumar, Priyadarshi’s lawyer who had accompanied him for his nomination, told me. “We were told in a column in Form 26”—an additional affidavit that must be filed with the nomination form—“in which he was asked whether he is using a government residence, he failed to provide answer for each of the three sub-questions.”
Kumar told me that Priyadarshi said he had answered the question by writing ‘Not Applicable,’ for a sub-question about the payment of rent, electricity, and water bills in a government residence, which he had never stayed in. Priyadarshi had ticked a checkbox that read ‘No.’ “The returning officer’s reply to Priyadarshi’s answer was bizarre,” Kumar said. “The officer said Priyadarshi should have provided separate answers to the question on rent, water and electricity though only one question was asked. Why didn’t they specify anywhere in the form that it had to be answered as three separate answers when the space left under it would accommodate only one word?”
Kumar continued, “Help desks are in place to help nominees correct small errors in the 20 page-long form, when there are any mistakes. Why are the help desks not doing their job?” He said that the rejection of Priyadarshi’s nomination was a huge blow for the NBM, a party with a very limited budget and fielding candidates from the weaker sections of society. Kumar said that the NBM has challenged Priyadarshi’s rejection in front of the ECI and HR Srinivasa, Bihar’s chief electoral officer. Baijunath K Singh, the deputy chief electoral officer of Bihar, confirmed that help desks were mandatory and their roles are clearly assigned. “It’s the help desks’ duty to verify the candidate’s filled form and help with the required corrections before he or she finally submits the forms for scrutiny,” he said. However, activists I spoke to told me that across the nomination process for Bihar’s polls, help desks were either absent or failed to help nominees from activist backgrounds.
As in Priyadarshi’s case, several nominees told me that local returning officers were often a major stumbling block in allowing them to contest in the election. Returning officers are usually recruited from among the sub-divisional officers or deputy collector for land reform of a state. Several activists and lawyers I spoke to said that elections vested too much power in the hands of bureaucrats. They said this is unhealthy for a democracy as lower-level bureaucrats tend to favour parties and candidates that have been in power.
“I have known about a few districts, including Saran, where the returning officer of most constituencies was either DCLR, ADM or SDO,” Manilal, an advocate at the Patna High Court, told me. “Such officers clearly have a bias against the candidates who fight for the land rights and forest rights of tribals. They oppress and deny rights to villagers and tribals while in office, dislike candidates who stand up for them. They definitely feel provoked to discourage them from contesting polls even when they are not functioning under the influence of bigger parties.”
Amar Ram, a Dalit activist who has been fighting for the enforcement of strict land ceilings in West Champaran district, was going to contest in the Ramnagar constituency on the NBM’s ticket. In 1961, the state government passed the Bihar Land Reforms (Fixation of Ceiling Area and Acquisition of Surplus Land) Act, which fixed the land ceiling at 15 acres for a family of five. However, these ceilings were never strictly enforced and landlessness continues, particularly among marginal communities. Ram has headed a movement that tries to enforce the act and redistribute land to landless and impoverished community.
“There have been many times where the police have lodged fake charges against Amar,” Jasoda Devi, a resident of Ramnagar, told me. On 4 July, Ram organised a protest in Bargajwa village against the government’s failure to redistribute land and encroachers stealing and selling Mahadalit owned land. The Ramnagar police charged him under Section 353 of the Indian Penal Code, which pertains to “assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty,” for blocking a road. The police arrested him on 15 October, just as he was about file his nomination for the election, five days before the deadline.
The next day, Ram wrote to a magistrate, who passed an order on 19 October directing to jail authorities to allow Ram to go personally to file his nomination at the returning officer’s office. But the jail authorities defied the court order, and Pankaj had to file Ram’s nomination in his place. The nomination Pankaj filed on Ram’s behalf had a minor error and the office of Mohammad Imran, the Ramnagar returning officer, did not have a help desk to help correct small problems like this. Very often, grassroot candidates are prone to making small errors because they lack expert legal counsel during the nomination process, which most major party candidates can afford. Imran rejected Ram’s nomination but did not give him a nomination rejection order, which EC regulations requires him to do. “They could have easily corrected the number as per rules if the intent wasn’t to find an excuse to reject Ram’s nomination,” Pankaj told me. “The rejection is unfair.” Ram was granted bail on 29 October. Imran did not respond to multiple calls.
“I have been wronged by the police, administration and election body because I saw dreams of succeeding in the fight for villagers to get their land rights,” Ram told me when I visited his village on 4 November. “The tiller is the owner of his or her land. Nobody else is. So many villagers from Gaunaha and Ramnagar had added up funds from their savings for this election. All the dreams have been shattered.”
Alongside grassroot activists, prominent critics of the BJP, too, have found their nominations rejected. On 17 October, the nomination of Sushma Sahu, a former member of the National Commission for Women and former ward councillor of the Patna Municipal Council, from the Bankipur constituency was rejected. Priyadarshi had tried to contest from the same seat. Sahu had previously been a major leader of the BJP, leading the Mahila Morcha, the party’s women’s wing in Bihar. However, Sahu had quit the party in 2020, claiming she was electorally sidelined in favour of three-time Bankipur MLA Nitin Navin.
“Electoral officers were the medium for this but I know the BJP is behind this rude shock,” Sahu told me. “I was punished for rebelling against BJP and challenging the decaying leadership of Nitin Navin. Returning officers in Bihar are playing at the hands of big parties this time. To put pressure on election officers to not allow independents in maximum numbers to contest elections is among their strategies this election.”
Sahu’s experience was similar to those of Ram and Priyadarshi, with the returning officer pointing out minor correctable errors in her form mere minutes before the nomination deadline. “Twenty minutes before my nomination deadline post scrutiny, the returning officer pointed two errors in my nomination form,” Sahu said. “In the question on whether there is criminal case, he told me I have not answered the column asking whether there were court cases against me. Standing in his chamber, I showed him that I have answered all the questioned columns. He asked me to attach a few affidavits while the deadline approached. I showed him that I had attached four affidavits with my forms. He asked me to wait outside his chamber. I kept waiting and my nomination deadline ran out.”
Sahu told me that she believed the rejection was entirely illegal and that she was challenging it in front of the CEO and the Patna High Court. When I contacted MI Patel, the general observer for Bankipur constituency, he said, “The scrutiny of all nominations at Bankipur took place fairly. No doubtful scrutiny was made under my observation.” Shashi Shekhar, the returning officer of Bankipur, refused to answer my questions on rejection of Sahu’s and Priyadarshi’s nomination over the phone.
While independent and grassroot leaders have struggled to complete the nomination process, those from the major parties of Bihar have had no such problem. Not a single nomination of the ruling alliance, which comprises primarily of the BJP and the JDU, was rejected. “No cases of RJD candidates or candidates from our alliance partners, the Congress, CPI, CPI(M), CPI(ML) facing difficulty has come to my notice this election,” Shivanand Tiwari, a senior RJD leader, told me. “I have full faith in the transparency of the electoral process.”
Even the third front, which includes parties that are powerful in other states but have only a small support base in Bihar, did not face much trouble in their nomination. “No cases of nomination rejection of RLSP candidates or candidates from our party allies”—the Bahujan Samaj Party, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen and the Jantantrik Party (Socialist)—“have been brought to my notice,” Upendra Kushwaha, the former union minister and supremo of the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party, told me. The only party with a sizeable large electoral presence that also struggled during the nomination process is Rajesh Ranjan’s—more commonly known as Pappu Yadav—Jan Adhikar Party, 12 of whose candidates were rejected.
The Election Commission of India has constitutional powers to act in an appropriate manner when the enacted laws make insufficient provisions to deal with certain situations during electoral process. Any new provision or guideline defined by the ECI is legally binding. All election authorities including returning officers are under the ECI’s jurisdiction. This makes the frequent failure of returning officers to strictly follow election guidelines illegal.
“The power to challenge the nomination rejection only lies with the court,” D Murugan, the additional chief electoral officer for Bihar told me. “Only in the rarest of rare cases, the ECI can ask the CEO to verify a doubtful rejection nomination. In that case, the CEO will seek a report on it from the district magistrate under whose administration the said constituency falls. But there were no such doubtful nomination rejections in Bihar. So, the CEO has not been asked to verify any nomination rejection in Bihar election 2020 by ECI.”
It is unclear what qualifies as a “doubtful nomination rejection.” Despite several candidates appealing their rejections in front of the CEO and the courts, election officials in the state dismiss any such enquiries by saying they are not “doubtful nomination rejections.” I called up Kumar Ravi, the district magistrate of Patna, under whose administration the nominations of both Priyadarshi and Sahu were rejected, told me, “There was no case of doubtful nomination rejections that I was asked to verify by the CEO.”
Correction: The description of the JP movement has been amended from a “left-wing movement” to a “student-led movement.”