It is shocking how inspite of the multitude of blunders by the UPA including but not limited to the Arjun Singh OBC reservation fiasco, the N-deal bribing issue, the laxity in punishing terrorists, prise rise, mis-handling of the economy, threatening to impose presidents rule in Orissa and Karnataka, denouncing Lord Ram and trying to destroy the Rama Sethu, portraying Hindus as terrorists, gifting away Nepal to the commies..........................., the Indian people seem to have voted them back to power with even more enthusiasm than even what the UPA expected!!
It is impossible that the Indian populace is so stupid that they would shoot themselves in the foot again!! The media of course played their bit by highjacking the real issues and focused on how handsome Rahul Gandhi looked and how pretty and dignified Priyanka Gandhi appeared while making Varun Gandhi look like some loony who wanted to spread "deheshat" in the country!!
It is not surprising though considering that
Kapil Sibal once said more than 150 publications and dailies in India are owned by Congress members. For loyal Congress fellows it won't take much time to carve a legend out of Rahul within a decade.
The BJP now has to rethink its strategy. Most important for it is to stregthen its base in states where it is already ruling such as Karnataka, MP, Chattishgrah, Gujarat, Himachal and Uttarkhand and start making inroads into states like Andhra and Orissa.
I found a
good article in the economic times which gives very good advice to the BJP in how best to rise from this low that they have reached. Hopefully there are some important BJP leaders who will read it. Advice ranges from reducing internal bickering and holding presidential primaries, delivering state governments, to grow in size from inside and not look for allies and the best advice is to decide who they are!
A few enlightening reads on the election regarding fraud that might have been perpetrated on the Indian public at least in certain constituencies.
http://election.rediff.com/column/2009/may/17/loksabhapoll-after-the-counting-and-other-stories.htm"There is, of course, the possibility that the average voter did not in fact fall for the UPA's charms, and that this election was subject to massive fraud. I am talking about Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). Having spent many years in the high-tech world, I do not trust computers, especially embedded systems. Researchers in the US have shown how easy it is to break into EVMs, which is why they have not adopted them. They have realised how important it is to have a paper audit trail, hanging chads and all.
It would not be extraordinarily difficult to install a programme with a Trojan Horse in it. To outward appearances and to ordinary testing, the programme would appear normal. However, when it is fed a sequence of keystrokes by the agent of the party committing the fraud, the Trojan Horse wakes up, and then, regardless of what buttons the voter actually presses, it can assign a certain (non-suspicious-looking) percentage (not 90% but, say 45%) to the preferred party. The Trojan Horse can even be programmed to quietly delete itself when the voting is over. Nobody would know any better, as there is no paper trail.
Let me emphasise that I do not have any evidence that this happened in 2009, but it is worth investigating. There were too many surprising -- almost miraculous -- victories by certain candidates whom the casual observer would have written off. By Occam's Razor, the simplest explanation is fraud. I would like to note in passing that in 2004, expecting the NDA to commit fraud, an Indian Communist in the US had prepared a suit alleging EVM fraud. Therefore it is clear that the thought has occurred to various people that there could be EVM fraud."
http://election.rediff.com/report/2009/may/16/loksabhapoll-sena-alleges-evm-malfuntion.htm"Rawale cited the examples of US and Indonesia where the use of EVMs has been stopped due their inconsistency." I wonder how i got only 5 votes from an area that is a Shiv Sena stronghold," the defeated candidate said. Replying to query, Rawale claimed that the MNS had not impacted the outcome."
http://www.indianexpress.com/oldStory/45296/"Producing doctored EVMs is child’s play: Computer chips that control the EVMs can be easily programmed to do all kinds of improper manipulations. For example, after a certain number of people (perhaps hundreds) have voted, the rest of the votes may be channeled to a chosen candidate. This is just one among many mischievous tricks possible."
http://election.rediff.com/interview/2009/may/19/loksabhapoll-cho-ramaswamy-on-election-2009.htm"The room for suspicion is in Vaiko's constituency. How is it that while counting, the votes increased by 23,000 more than the polled votes? There is a register of polled votes. When it is counted, it is much more than that. It means there was rigging also. Those who rigged must have gone overboard in Vaiko's constituency!"
A counter point to the manipulated EVMs is given here,
http://theoverlord.wordpress.com/2009/05/19/the-indian-electronic-voting-machines/
