In Gopinath Munde's Beed, the curious case of 39 candidates

Drive just 150 kilometres south of Aurangabad, one of Maharashtra’s top five industrial districts, and you’re in parched, scorching Beed. Outside the airconditioned refuge of the vehicle, it’s 39 degrees Celsius well before noon, but it’s not the heat that has election staff sweating. There’s about 10 days to go for elections here in the heart of Maharashtra’s arid Marathwada region, but authorities have already sent the season’s first notice over paid news to a local Marathi daily that has been writing what one official called “eulogies, totally without application of mind” in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party. (For those who don’t know already, the BJP candidate from Beed is Gopinath Munde, incumbent MP who is expected to post an easy win and possibly the stat BJP’s only leader with a pan-Maharashtra appeal and a major mass support base of his own.) It’s not the paid news that’s keeping officials busy either. There are ten externments expected in the coming days, of habitual offenders in in cases of election violence. There are several sensitive booths where authorities are putting in place cameras, web-casting, micro-observers, central police forces and more. There will be several cases under the draconian Maharashtra Prevention of Dangerous Activities (MPDA) act which permits detention without trial for long periods. [caption id=“attachment_1469371” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Gopinath Munde. IBN Live.[/caption] The authorities have also cracked down upon vehicles from Mumbai and Aurangabad entering Beed with campaign material that does not bear th emandatory details of the publisher. Just three days back, a pilot with a private company lodged a complaint after he was thrashed by Munde’s supporters. The official route he was assigned while ferrying Munde mentioned Beed but not Bida, a nearby town. Apparently, somebody taking the details of the route assumed Beed and Bida to be the same and dropped the latter, leading to the pilot refusing to fly the senior leader to Bida. Some unsavoury words were exchanged, following which Munde left in his car. But gathered BJP supporters, apparently outraged that their leader had to take the road, rained blows on the pilot, right in front of gathered policemen. A new chopper was assigned, reportedly belonging to another industrialist, and Munde’s campaign has continued without further ado, though three BJP men and about 10 others were named in the FIR. None of this drama, however, is as challenging as the one election authorities are still perplexed about. Beed has 39 candidates in the fray for the election scheduled for April 17, and that means there will be 39 polling agents inside every polling station. But the polling stations are mostly classrooms, and with Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan parameters citing a maximum of 40 students to a class, these classrooms are designed for 40 children and a teacher. Putting 39 polling agents, polling staff, and a few voters inside every station is turning out to be a logistical nightmare, one that they still haven’t found a solution to. Then there’s the curious little aside: Beed Lok Sabha Constituency is Maharashtra’s constituency Number 39. It will see a precise 39 candidates in the fray. And authorities are also making elaborate preparations for exactly 39 polling stations that have been termed critical, basically sensitive polling stations where trouble-makers abound. As one official said, it’s a Puzzle of 39 they’re trying to solve.