Remember Richard III – the 15th-century Plantagenet raja of England as depicted by the late 16th play by Bill Shakespeare – imploring in the battlefield, ‘A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!’ This week, we had no raja but Rajya Sabha members shouting from their battlefields in Karnataka, UP and Himachal, ‘A vote! A vote! My Rajya (Sabha seat) for a vote!’ In the end, some got what they wanted, others didn’t. But as in any play worth its Shakespearean plot twists, climax was reached in some of these contests by virtue of cross-voting legislators. Unlike cross-dressers, or folks engaged regularly in CrossFit training in gyms, cross-voters are seen to be a subset of those who double-cross – that is, betray. In this case, their party. In this latest round of Rajya Sabha elections, too, there were double-crossing cross-voters across the board – six Congress MLAs ‘crossing over’ to vote for the BJP candidate in Himachal Pradesh, and one BJP MLA slipping to the ‘other side’ in Karnataka.
Horses and votes aside, there was also the matter of lots – not ‘lots’ as in many, but as in objects like straws or pieces of paper randomly selected as part of a decision-making process. In the case of a tie after cross-voting, BJP’s Harsh Mahajan won against Congress’ Abhishek Singhvi by the draw of lots. Goes to show that loyalty apart, lots matter.
