Famous Journalist Nalini Singh Recounts Witnessing Booth Capturing In Bihar Election

On the morning of November 22, 1989, just as the flight to Patna was being called at Palam airport, I rushed to the crankish coin payphone and dialled the office of Shiv Sharma, Director General, Doordarshan with no hope that his PA would put me through to the mighty DG of the only TV channel in the country, as I was a mere independent journalist. But he came on the line, “What are you going to Bihar for? We have enough stringers and don’t really need any more coverage,” but he did not disconnect when I gushed that I was going to shoot booths being captured in Bihar in the on-going general elections. “That’s outlandish, sounds impossible…but call me when you return”.

This was bureaucratese for “maybe”, and, elated with just this remote possibility that if I made a TV programme with shots of actual booth capturing, the DG might consider it for telecast, I walked on air. I had witnessed industrial-scale booth capturing and the alarming subversion of democracy in the 1980 general elections, and had allowed a slow burn in my mind to turn into a fixation to expose this erosion of democracy to the country (please refer to my article in the Economic and Political Weekly, May 1980, entitled, Elections As They Really Are). The practice of booth capturing was spreading fast, and only TV would jolt the country to this shocking truth, I was convinced. But how? I had hired a High Band camera (weight 18 kg), and a separate Nagra unit for sound recording (5 kg), and coaxed and cajoled a cameraman and sound recordist to accompany me (both were moonlighting from DD). To put it in context, in these times of palm-sized smart phones and meta smart camera glasses, our ‘investigative’ team was as inconspicuous as a camel caravan.

At Patna airport we hired a shaky Ambassador car for a five-hour journey to north Bihar, where I had the names of some vague ‘sources’. Along the way, we stopped at electric sub-stations to charge the camera batteries, since electricity was elusive outside the sub-stations. But we were in luck. Just as we entered the district town of Sitamarhi, Rajiv Gandhi was silhouetted by the rays of the declining sun in the cabin of his helicopter at lift-off, with a young Rahul Gandhi with him. It was an invaluable election campaign shot, and luckily, just then a special All India Radio election bulletin blared the official warning, “All booth capturers will be shot at sight.” These were the opening audio-video shots of our programme.

Voting in north Bihar was a day away. My source was surprised that we had come all the way from Delhi to cover booth capturing. “Booth par kabza toh ekdum aam hai” (Booth capturing is so common). We had just one day to locate and interview the dacoits who had been contracted to capture booths, shoot their locally-made bombs and weapons, identify politicians who financed the forcible capture of booths, interview voters who had not voted since Independence, and talk to macho males who claimed proudly on camera that they voted for the women in their family “because females had no knowledge of anything”. We got all of these promising interviews, but our main interview was scheduled with a dacoit-booth-capturer in a tabela (cattle shed) at the rear end of an old house. We were told that he had agreed to our request for a 3 pm interview in natural light in the shed, because we could not shoot indoors due to the low voltage. It was a nail-biting wait because the dacoit would have told us about the procedure of capturing booths, from receiving the advance, to intimidating and thwarting genuine voters, and fleeing after stamping 90 per cent of the ballots. We did not have a back-up plan because all other booth capturers were busy concluding thekas (contracts). Hours slipped by and he did not arrive. By 6 pm, we packed up dejectedly.

We were running out of critical time to interview the booth-capturer-dacoit…And then our source mentioned that although it was dangerous, he could take us to the kachcheri (overnight shack in the fields) where a famous dacoit had moved in, in preparation for capturing booths the next day. We headed to the fields in pitch darkness, the Ambassador lurching over the ridges and furrows. Miraculously, the gent agreed to step out of the shack so we could shoot the interview in the car’s headlights. He described matter-of-factly how he had agreed to a rate of Rs 5,000 per booth, 100 per cent advance payment, and had a contract for five booths, a total of about 5,000 votes. This was enough to tilt the balance in favour of his client-candidate (who had engaged several other capturers, too). His accomplices stood in the shadows, with their stash of country-made bombs and weapons nearby. At the end of the interview, I retreated backward to the car, keeping the dacoit in our sights, which was an unnecessary precaution because he was only interested in the money from his client, not in detaining us.

The next morning was voting day in north Bihar. The Terai was swathed in ribbons of fog, but suddenly a squat knife glinted in the first rays of the sun, and shouts of “Jai Bhavani” rang out, as the booth capturing dacoit’s team was off in their jeep to capture the first booth.

We drove in the opposite direction since I had learnt that many of the voting booths were operating in the verandahs of village schools, where we would be able to slip in and out quickly, and where the light was ideal for shooting with our bulky camera. As we drove, our ‘source’ spotted booth capturing in a verandah. The cameraman, sound recordist and I darted out of the car, camera rolling, and within 45 seconds we had the first ‘live’ shots ever of systematic booth capturing, with the precision of an organised assembly line. Four people squatted on the floor—one franked the favoured party’s symbol on the ballot, another affixed thumb impressions of ‘voters’, a third ensured that the Presiding Officer signed each ballot and stamped it, and a fourth folded the ballots neatly and deposited them in the ballot boxes. We had crystal clear shots, and were ecstatic. But I wanted to push my luck, and so, after driving for half-an-hour, we saw another booth being stamped, again in a school building. The cameraman jumped over the ropes that defined the booth’s boundary, as did I, but the sound recordist threw the recorder at me and yelled, “Hum giriftaar ho jaayenge. Main jaa raha hoon” (We will get arrested. I’m leaving). We had entered the prohibited radius around the booth, and could be arrested, for violating election law (as a precaution, before leaving Delhi, I had confidentially informed three of the country’s top editors about my plans: B.G. Verghese, H.K. Dua and Arun Shourie, my brother. They knew, and would have borne witness, had we been arrested.)

At this booth, supporters of two major political parties, the Congress and the Janata Dal (JD) were in a scuffle about who had the ‘rights’ over this booth, and were snatching as many ballots as they could, as our camera rolled. The Presiding Officer, who was cowering in a corner, begged me with folded hands, “Booth ka number nahin batana, Sahib, varna meri school adhyapak ki naukri chali jaaegi, aur mere teen bachche bhookon marenge” (Please don’t disclose the booth number, or I will lose my school teacher’s job, and my three children will starve). I gave him my word, and the name of the village and the booth number will go with me to my grave.

All this while, the police constable on duty was resting inside in the schoolroom. “What booth capturing?” he demanded when I interviewed him. “Voting is going on peacefully. There’s no problem.” He did not question us about our illegal presence in the booth premises, and gratefully we jumped over the ropes, with our prized evidence of the disenfranchisement of Indian voters.

But as we sat in the car, I picked up the two high-band tapes with the crucial shots of booth capturing and hid them in the folds of my sari, wanting to protect them with my life. I feared the ecosystem of officials, politicians and dacoits all of whom we were about to expose. So, to minimise risk, we drove recklessly through the night fog, and reached Patna airport in time for the morning flight to Delhi.

Another deadline loomed, because the tapes had to be edited into a 30-minute TV programme, and handed over to Doordarshan for review, additions/deletions, or rejection. After landing in Delhi, bone-tired but determined, we drove straight to Mike Pande’s River Bank studio in Old Delhi, worked 16 hours non-stop before I made the call to Shiv Sharma, DG DD. I wanted to tell him in frilly prose that we had plucked journalistic stars from the murky horizon of compromised politicians, but instead said sedately, “Sir, the rough-cut of the programme is ready.”

He agreed to see the rough-cut. Soon, he called to say, “It’s one-sided, so now quickly get the Election Commission on record.” I was sleepless and anxious, but saw a chance of telecast. However, CEC R.V.S. Peri Sastri was ill, and so the Deputy Election Commissioner, Bhalla, gave a memorable interview in which, of course, he denied booth capturing, but confirmed, “People get slapped and mauled during elections. What’s new?”

I delivered the final telecast tape to Sharma’s office within hours, just as rumours engulfed the country that the Congress would lose majority, and Rajiv Gandhi’s government would fall. An ‘honest’ and ‘bold’ government was expected to take over, but when, nobody could tell. Meanwhile I learnt that the Doordarshan production staff had altered our name for the programme, ‘Booth Capturing 1989’ to ‘Matdaan Kendron Par Kabza’, and tentatively slotted it for the prime-time slot at 9.30 pm on Sunday, December 3, 1989.

The Congress emerged as the single largest party, but well below the majority, and with far fewer seats, V.P. Singh’s Janta Dal was making a dextrous bid for forming the government. This was the interregnum between two governments, and the iron frame of bureaucracy was in charge. So, our tape was sent to the (still) PM Rajiv Gandhi’s Press Advisor for a fit-for-telecast endorsement. After reviewing the programme he is reported to have said, “This is pure journalism. It must be telecast.”

Later that evening the country’s top IAS echelons tried to thwart the telecast, but the DD officials doubled down  on  the telecast  and upstaged the mandarins, bringing the alarming phenomenon of booth capturing to its mass viewers

What did I learn from the pursuit of exposing booth capturing? One, that relentless focus pays, as I learnt over the nine years of befriending dacoits for access to their smudgy world, before we could shoot booth capturing. Two, that you have to train your brain to anticipate grave set-backs, but you must be in denial about their devastating effects and find an alternate route by taking even the remotest chance. Three, ever interrogate the authorities’ claims (as in Electronic Voting Machines now). And four, don’t worship the gods of fame, influence and money—but allow only the jewel of journalistic success to claim your time and mind.

(Views expressed are personal)

Nalini Singh is a Senior journalist, producer and anchor of the TV news programme, Ankhon Dekhi, several election-related programmes, feature programmes, promoter of a Nepali language TV channel, and occasional columnist.

Democracy is about ballots, but also about memory—who safeguards both, and who seeks to rewrite them? Outlook’s September 11, 2025 issue, 'Election Omission' probes these erasures—of voters, voices, and histories—asking what they mean for India’s democratic future. This article appeared in print as 'Captured On Camera'