Another set of elections and another theatre of absurdity is unfolding in different parts of our great democratic country. The performance in this farce is nothing short of spectacular. A total disregard for people’s mandate, shameless clinging to power, trading that would shame horses, and totally amoral acts for power are what it has unveiled, but it hasn’t got us to raise anything more than a yawn. It is business as usual in the circus of our politics. Across state capitals, the mandate of the voter is treated as a minor administrative detail to be bypassed, bartered, or explicitly violated.
Nowhere is this truer than in Kerala. The Congress-led United Democratic Front secured a thumping majority of 102 seats, riding an anti-incumbency wave. Throughout the campaign, VD Satheesan was projected as the leader of the charge. He had even declared that he would go into political exile if the UDF lost. It seems, despite the victory, political wilderness is his fate. The moment the victory was secured, the democratic process morphed into a classic backroom brawl. Satheesan, Ramesh Chennithala, and KC Venugopal have engaged in a permanent, circular struggle for the throne.
The speculation mills in Thiruvananthapuram and Delhi are working overtime, with leaked reports alternatively claiming that the newly elected MLAs favour Venugopal—who did not even contest the Assembly elections—or that the public sentiment is firmly behind Satheesan. Adding to this paralysis is the veteran Chennithala, the senior-most among all Congress leaders sans AK Antony. When Chennithala stepped aside from the post of Leader of the Opposition in 2021 to make way for Satheesan, it was widely understood within party corridors that he had been promised the Chief Ministerial candidacy for this very election. Now, with the prize in sight, those promises appear as fleeting as election manifestos.
The entire state is held hostage, waiting for a sealed envelope to descend from the Congress high command in New Delhi. It is an extraordinary setup: the sovereign will of the people is reduced to an advisory note of a family, sitting in an air-conditioned room thousands of miles away. It is like a distant emperor of Delhi bestowing a regional governorship in the medieval era. The Congress has run this bait-and-switch routine with practised ease in Karnataka, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh—using popular local faces to harvest votes, only to install high-command loyalists once the ballot boxes are sealed.
If Kerala represents the paralysis of victory, Tamil Nadu offers a masterclass in ideological bankruptcy. The charismatic actor Vijay, armed with massive box-office appeal but absolute zero administrative or political experience, secured 108 seats with his newly minted party. Lacking the numbers to cross the majority mark, he needed allies.
What followed was a breathtaking display of political gymnastics. Parties like the Congress, the CPI(M), and the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML)—who had spent the entire campaign operating inside the DMK-led alliance, warning voters about the grave dangers of Vijay’s political inexperience—instantly suffered from collective amnesia. They abandoned their alliance, performed a flawless backflip, and marched into Vijay’s tent. The hypocrisy is staggering. For these parties, secularism, ideology, and manifestos are merely decorative wrappers; the moment a Cabinet berth is dangled, the wrapper is discarded, proving that their only true guiding principle is the pursuit of power at any cost.
Meanwhile, West Bengal pushed the boundaries of constitutional absurdity. Following a decisive election in which the Opposition secured a clear majority, the outgoing Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, simply refused to accept the results. In an unprecedented standoff, she refused to submit her resignation, forcing Governor RN Ravi to step in and utilise his constitutional powers to dissolve the Assembly just as its term expired.
But the ideological transition of Bengal’s leadership carries its own heavy baggage. The newly installed Chief Minister, Suvendu Adhikari, is the same leader who, in a highly publicised outburst, explicitly called for halting the national slogan “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas.” He went on record to demand the dissolution of the party’s minority wing, replacing the inclusive prime ministerial slogan with a stark, transactional decree: “Jo hamare saath, hum unke saath” (Those who are with us, we are with them).
Though made prior to his elevation, these remarks sit in direct, jarring conflict with the solemn constitutional oath he took on May 9. Under the Third Schedule of the Constitution, a Chief Minister swears to “do right to all manner of people in accordance with the Constitution and the law, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will.” How does a leader who has publicly championed governing only for those who align with him square that sectarian philosophy with an oath that demands absolute, impartial duty to every single citizen, regardless of how they voted?
This glaring contradiction highlights a systemic vacuum. If the system allows a leader to ascend to the highest executive office of a state with a documented public track record of rejecting universal governance, then the oath itself risks being reduced to empty theatre. There must be strict, enforceable measures to ensure that no elected leader can make a mockery of their constitutional pledge. The judiciary must hold the power to immediately monitor, censure, or even suspend any executive head who acts or governs in direct violation of their oath of impartial service. If a corporate executive can be ousted for violating their fiduciary duty to the stakeholders, a chief minister who compromises their constitutional duty to any section of the citizenry must face swift, systemic consequences.
The systemic decay across these states makes a compelling case for moving away from the Westminster model and adopting a direct presidential or gubernatorial election at the state level.Under a direct election model, the voter’s choice is absolute and unalterable. There is no room for a high command to swap the candidate after the election. There is no opportunity for opportunistic entities to trade their alliance partners overnight for a piece of the ministerial pie. A directly elected leader would have a clear mandate, a fixed term, and the ability to appoint a Cabinet of actual administrative experts rather than incompetent MLAs who must be appeased to prevent a government collapse. The elected head of the government would have time to govern rather than herding a group of amoral elected representatives, keeping them together by offering whatever they can squeeze from the minority governments, who vanish to private resorts and topple governments at will and for a price.
Until we structurally reform the system to align the vote directly with the leader, Indian elections will remain a grand farce—a system where the people are allowed to choose the actors, but the script is always written, revised, and ripped apart by the directors behind the scenes.
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