How Gujarat's saffron brigade targeted interior village in Vadgam, battleground of state's independent Dalit face

By Tanushree Gangopadhyay
Is the saffron brigade in a state of turmoil at the thought of losing at the hands of Gujarat's Dalit face, Jignesh Mevani, fighting from Vadgam, a North Gujarat constituency, as independent supported by Congress? Perturbed by this scenario, they appeared to have targeted an interior village of the constituency, Chhaniyana.
Deep down in this remote village of Banaskantha district, BJP candidate Vijay Chakravarty ruffled his sleeves and managed to suspend polling at the two booths 112 and 113 for five hours from 12 noon.
On a complaint Mevani had got ink marks put close to the election symbol adjacent to his name on the EVM, Chakravarty he and his agent Rakesh Vagmar alleged thst the rival candidate had tampered with the machine. He demanded that the polls be stalled and repoll be ordered.
They refused to listen to polling officials, who were compelled to clean the machine to continue the polling. Presiding Officer Bhuvan Sadhu, exasperated by the protesting BJP, said that 744 votes out of 1,920 had already been cast. Over 100 voters were in the queue to cast their votes.
"How can we allow the polling, as most villagers are illiterate. They will get influenced to vote for Mevani after seeing the ink marks," thundered Vagmer. "We want two new machines and the polls can certainly be held tomorrow. We have given applications to the Presiding Officer."
Sadhu was anguished at such behaviour saying that "even as the voters are keen to continue, they are shouting at me. It is not my fault, the Election Commission has to take the decision." Polling was restarted after Mevani came and insisted on continuing. Vagmere, Chakravarty and several others refused to allow any polling.

Returning Officer DK Hadiyol, who rushed, in could not handle the situation, as they continued to argue and created a din. "I am in no position to stall the polling. The Election Commission (EC) is the decision making authority."
EC ordered a repoll, but the whole episode suggested BJP frustration.
A scheduled caste constituency, Vadgam has a unique demographic profile. It has mainly Chowdhary, Dalit and Muslim communities. It is a potato bowl, say farmers. "We also grow wheat, groundnut and several other vegetables. It is an important point for Banas dairy. Our village is an important automobile centre. We drive auto rickshaws", said a passerby.
"This has been a Congress bastion. My father Ashok Dabhi was an MLA from the Congress party soon after emergency", recalled Pradeep Dabhi. He runs two schools in the village, but lives in Palanpur, not very far away. Ironically, Haribhai Chowdhary, BJP MP from Banaskantha, belongs to this village.
"Jignesh's popularity has irked the BJP, hence they gave created this problem. They have needed some excuse to slurr him, hence they got someone to tamper with the EVM illegally", one of the women who squatted since 12 noon merely to cast their vote amidst the melee said. "We have come from long distance merely to exercise our franchise."
"Look at their audacity, they illegally photographed the EVM with the ink mark and posted it on WhatsApp", complained a Mevani supporter. "However ,this unruliness will certainly be overruled as it is illegal and very innocuous."
Mevani and his supporters in Vadgam are upbeat. They are confident of his victory. Habib Khan, tractor owner, said: "All the 25 villages I visited today gave Mevani the top. There are 2.60 lakh voters in 145 villages in the constituency. With 70 per cent voting we are sure to win."
Rojasana, Chhapia, Magarwada, Vadgam and several other villages had a heavy turn out. Students returned to Rojasana from Ahmedabad to vote.

Comments

Plastic burning in homes threatens food, water and air across Global South: Study

By Jag Jivan In a groundbreaking study spanning 26 countries across the Global South , researchers have uncovered the widespread and concerning practice of households burning plastic waste as a fuel for cooking, heating, and other domestic needs. The research, published in Nature Communications , reveals that this hazardous method of managing both waste and energy poverty is driven by systemic failures in municipal services and the unaffordability of clean alternatives, posing severe risks to human health and the environment.

From protest to proof: Why civil society must rethink environmental resistance

By Shankar Sharma* As concerned environmentalists and informed citizens, many of us share deep unease about the way environmental governance in our country is being managed—or mismanaged. Our complaints range across sectors and regions, and most of them are legitimate. Yet a hard question confronts us: are complaints, by themselves, effective? Experience suggests they are not.

Economic superpower’s social failure? Inequality, malnutrition and crisis of India's democracy

By Vikas Meshram India may be celebrated as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, but a closer look at who benefits from that growth tells a starkly different story. The recently released World Inequality Report 2026 lays bare a country sharply divided by wealth, privilege and power. According to the report, nearly 65 percent of India’s total wealth is owned by the richest 10 percent of its population, while the bottom half of the country controls barely 6.4 percent. The top one percent—around 14 million people—holds more than 40 percent, the highest concentration since 1961. Meanwhile, the female labour force participation rate is a dismal 15.7 percent.

Kolkata event marks 100 years since first Communist conference in India

By Harsh Thakor* A public assembly was held in Kolkata on December 24, 2025, to mark the centenary of the First Communist Conference in India , originally convened in Kanpur from December 26 to 28, 1925. The programme was organised by CPI (ML) New Democracy at Subodh Mallik Square on Lenin Sarani. According to the organisers, around 2,000 people attended the assembly.

From colonial mercantilism to Hindutva: New book on the making of power in Gujarat

By Rajiv Shah Professor Ghanshyam Shah ’s latest book, “ Caste-Class Hegemony and State Power: A Study of Gujarat Politics ”, published by Routledge , is penned by one of Gujarat ’s most respected chroniclers, drawing on decades of fieldwork in the state. It seeks to dissect how caste and class factors overlap to perpetuate the hegemony of upper strata in an ostensibly democratic polity. The book probes the dominance of two main political parties in Gujarat—the Indian National Congress and the BJP—arguing that both have sustained capitalist growth while reinforcing Brahmanic hierarchies.

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...

The greatest threat to our food system: The aggressive push for GM crops

By Bharat Dogra Thanks to the courageous resistance of several leading scientists who continue to speak the truth despite increasing pressures from the powerful GM crop and GM food lobby , the many-sided and in some contexts irreversible environmental and health impacts of GM foods and crops, as well as the highly disruptive effects of this technology on farmers, are widely known today.

History, culture and literature of Fatehpur, UP, from where Maulana Hasrat Mohani hailed

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Maulana Hasrat Mohani was a member of the Constituent Assembly and an extremely important leader of our freedom movement. Born in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, Hasrat Mohani's relationship with nearby district of Fatehpur is interesting and not explored much by biographers and historians. Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri has written a book on Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Fatehpur. The book is in Urdu. He has just come out with another important book, 'Hindi kee Pratham Rachna: Chandayan' authored by Mulla Daud Dalmai.' During my recent visit to Fatehpur town, I had an opportunity to meet Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri and recorded a conversation with him on issues of history, culture and literature of Fatehpur. Sharing this conversation here with you. Kindly click this link. --- *Human rights defender. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/vbrawat , X @freetohumanity, Skype @vbrawat

Transgender Bill testimony of Govt of India's ‘contempt’ for marginalized community

Counterview Desk India’s civil society network, National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM)* has said that the controversial transgender Bill, passed in the Rajya Sabha on November 26, which happened to be the 70th anniversary of the Indian Constitution, is a reflection on the way the Government of India looks at the marginalized community with utter contempt.

Search This Blog