Unfrocking Congress

The Great Indian Tamasha™ had come to an end in the four states yesterday with a great finish! BJP romping home with a winning 3-1 margin against the Congress, the lone loss in the miniscule state of Delhi. The fact that it won, with huuuuge margins in MP and Rajasthan the most populous of the four, in three states will give a huge fillip to BJP for the coming LS polls. The fact that Ajit Jogi couldn't properly turn the Judeo tapes to his favour spoke poorly of his leadership. The most startling feature of the poll campaign in these four states, as NDTV rightly pointed out, was that BJP, for once, rid itself of its pet issues of Hindutva, SFO and cow slaughter and concentrated more on the developmental and economic issues in the four states. Whether these pet issues will come to the fore once the power changes hands is anybody's guess. As always Congress was quick to find an excuse for the slap-in-the-face electoral results - anti-incumbency!! The fact that Sheila Dixit won and Diggy Raja lost showed that poor governance, and not anti-incumbency, was the reason for Congress's failure. They must've seen it coming when even the fire-brand sanyasin Uma Bharti focused on 'mundance' issues of road and power! Well, enough of my political commentary!

As Sashi Tharoor rightly noted, Elections along with Cricket, form the nation's popular pastime. I used to enjoy them a lot, especially on Star News when NDTV was its news provider, whose forte was the poll coverage. In those days of manual counting, the ritual was spread over few days, with lots of scope for dramatic twists of fortune. Prannoy Roy always appearing busy, and business-like at the same time, with lots of election analysts expounding their theories, making full user of their few minutes of glory, news reporters sending teasing tidbits from different parts - oh, it was such fun! Now with the advent of EVMs, the bloody shit starts at 8 in the morning and the whole counting process ends at 2 pm!! The turnarounds are too quick and too short-lived! Before the so called expert could reach the last sentence of his interpretation of the results, the lead magically would change hands, and the poor guy would have to turn his theory upside down to explain the latest twist.

Be all that as it may, can some one explain the process to get oneself registered as a voter? :-)

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The Great Indian Tamasha™ - Copyright © NDTV