If there is a global prize for solving mysteries, it should be awarded to Tamil Nadu's Director General of Police and the Chennai city police commissioner because they seem to have unearthed a hitherto unknown secret.

Letika Saran, the commissioner has said, "Chennai civic elections were held peacefully and without the hindrance of bogus voters." This comment is indeed thrilling! We cannot but praise her sagacity.

The DGP [D Mukherjee] on the other hand has excelled his subordinate.

He has managed to "find out" that the elections to the local bodies "were conducted lawfully and peacefully barring a few stray incidents."

Those who speak such truth need exemplary courage.

Ordinary mortals like us do not have the training, wherewithal, technological inputs and the skill to decipher the doublespeak of official reports. Therefore we do not possess their "special powers" to understand the truth.

Sadly we have to depend on thousands of eyewitness accounts and independent views to form our opinion.

Thus we now know: that doors remained shut for voters in numerous polling booths; that several ordinary citizens believed those in authority [read DMK party workers and policemen] when they said that it was all over by 11 a.m. on election day and returned home; that the AIADMK, MDMK and DMDK agents were chased away from polling stations; that DMK partymen and the rowdies in their wake could threaten the laity and stuff ballot boxes with votes stamped in approval of the ruling arrangement; that Tamil Nadu could understand the real meaning of the term "booth-capturing" because the masses saw it with their own eyes; that policemen tried to snatch television cameras; that reporters were beaten up; and finally that opposition parties' followers including a legislator were "dealt with severely" with serious wounds by ruling party goons...In short, it was a bloody toll from a poll.

And indeed it is this election which has been classified as "peaceful" by senior police officials.

All these electoral excesses were committed with police complicity.

Of course, sceptics can indeed argue that all this could have been done by the opposition.

Even big newspapers which avoided pointing the obvious discreetly said, "certain groups of individuals indulged in violence, captured booths, stuffed ballot boxes..." But those too had to indicate certain truths.

"The police did not stop these attempts...police did not interfere...policemen were mute spectators..." were some of the descriptions of the scenes in the elections by major newspapers.

If indeed the uniformed fraternity had allowed the opposition consisting of AIADMK, MDMK and DMDK to indulge in these excesses, by now there would have been large scale suspensions, transfers and summary dismissals.

The very fact that the police remained mute spectators tells the truth – that the culprit was the ruling DMK.

During the May general elections, the AIADMK managed to break the belief that Chennai city was a bastion of the DMK by winning seven Assembly seats. The DMK leadership had to prove a point during the just concluded civic polls.

Already the ruling party is dogged by the tag that it is heading a minority regime.

Naturally it was apprehensive of the possibility of the opposition's hardening, united resolve to exhibit a show of strength.

Thus, the Chennai Corporation elections were turned into a farce of the DMK, by the DMK and for the DMK.

When the State Election Commission functions like a branch office of the ruling party, it would be difficult for the opposition to seek recourse to justice through the courts. The laws will remain only on paper till they are interpreted properly by its guardians. Else they are mere tombs of tomes.

From now on, it is the duty of the people to remember the evidence of this government's ugly face till elections visit us the next time.