An intrepid The UnReal Times investigation has brought to light something astounding. There exists an underground group of non-BJP politicians, sympathizers, media persons, intellectuals and sundry other anti Right Wing personalities who play a customized version of the popular game BINGO before every assembly or general election in India.
Our reporter managed to click a photo of a half-filled BINGO grid of one of the players from an ongoing game. We reproduce it here:
As per the rules of the game, each player carries with him or her a grid like this where the same elements are distributed in random fashion. After a designated launch date, the players start ticking off incidents referred to in the grid’s cells as and when they happen. The first person to strike off four elements in a row – horizontally, vertically or diagonally – wins the game.
“I only need two more incidents to get BINGO. Fingers crossed!” said an excited Samajwadi Party leader who is part of this underground group of players.
According to sources, the game was originally conceived by a bunch of bored Congress leaders in the late nineties, who played the game to amuse themselves. Later, as 24×7 news channels came into prominence, interest in the game grew and the pool of players expanded to include regional anti-BJP parties, prominent intellectuals and some media persons.
A game is typically launched a few months before an election. If it is a big one, such as the General elections or the assembly election of an important state such as UP, the game may be launched more than an year in advance. A computer program picks elements from a pool of incidents, prints randomized grids and randomly assigns it to participants. Players exchange whispered updates on their BINGO grids during inter-party meets, weddings, news debates and various other occasions.
Congress leader Ahmed Patel is said to be the reigning BINGO champion, and has won as many as seven BINGO titles. “It is crazy how often he wins. It’s uncanny. Events happen according to their positions in his BINGO grid. It’s almost as if he had something to do with it,” said another BINGO player, shaking his head in awe.