Kerala's election day featured UDF booth agents attacked with cowhage itching powder, a Congress agent caught wearing smart spectacles inside a polling booth, and voters turned away because their ballots had already been mysteriously cast via post. Kerala: where even election fraud requires a higher degree of creativity.
The April 9 Kerala Assembly elections proved that God's Own Country also runs God's Own Electoral Circus. In Kannur and Kasaragod, UDF women booth agents filed complaints alleging that someone deployed cowhage itching powder against them — a botanical weapon that would make a Bond villain jealous — to physically incapacitate them during voting hours. In Uduma, Kasaragod, a Congress polling agent was caught wearing smart spectacles inside the booth, presumably to livestream democracy in high definition. But the pièce de résistance came from Wadakkanchery in Thrissur, where a voter arrived at his booth only to be told his vote had already been recorded as a postal ballot — a ballot he never requested and certainly never filled out. The identical ghost-voting scenario repeated in Kuttiady, Kozhikode. Meanwhile in Palakkad, BJP workers were allegedly caught distributing cash on camera, and in Kalpetta, a polling agent was removed after someone noticed she was simultaneously employed as an ASHA worker. The Chief Electoral Officer, defending a delayed turnout figure of 79.63%, presumably needed extra time to count the votes that cast themselves.