A Token Of Deceit

A new method of enticing voters seems to have caught on during this year’s assembly elections in Tamil Nadu. Call it an extension of or updated version of the state’s freebie culture in electoral politics. While many candidates allegedly distributed cash to voters, those not that well-off took a short cut to buy votes. Like Balamurugan, the AMMK candidate from Kumbakonam. A day before voting on April 6, his supporters distributed tokens on which the name and address of a leading grocery shop was printed along with the figure “2,000/-“. The voters were informed that they could exchange the tokens for Rs 2,000 worth of goods from the shop the day after polling.

But when the gullible voters approached the shop owner, he claimed total ignorance of any such arrangement with the candidate. Soon he even downed his shutters after pasting posters that declared “This shop is not responsible for the tokens given by any candidate”. Many voters went to the shop carrying large shopping bags. They had to return fuming at the con the candidate pulled off. Some AMMK functionaries, when confronted, tried to explain that the tokens were meant to be exchanged for Rs 2,000 in cash and the address was the location where the payment was to happen. According to several Kumbakonam voters, who had got tricked into voting for the AMMK’s “Cooker” symbol, even this claim proved to be a hoax since no one from the party was present near that shop after election day to give the money.

“The AMMK seems to specialise in this kind of trickery after it had given Rs 20 banknotes as tokens to be exchanged for Rs 2,000 after the byelection in R.K. Nagar in December 2017. Even there, many a voter who voted for T.T.V. Dhinakaran, were left holding Rs 20 notes looking to exchange them even months after the byelection was over,” recalls a reporter who had extensively covered the bypoll.

Other than cash and household gifts, there are reports that the voters were given tokens for local shops to buy meat and even fish from the vendors. Both the major Dravidian parties—DMK and the ruling AIADMK—are known to encourage this deep-rooted culture of freebies and even national parties such as the Congress and BJP have fallen for it. The BJP’s Vanathi Srinivasan has been accused of distributing cash in Coimbatore. The ruling AIADMK candidates distributed tokens in many places that can be exchanged for washing machines and six free LPG cylinders promised by the party’s manifesto. “What happens if the AIADMK candidate loses? Since the DMK never made these two promises, this token would go waste,” bemoans a voter in Madurai.

By G.C. Shekhar in Chennai