Indian democracy is a series of stage-managed farces. Lawmakers pretend to argue matters in Parliament even though they're only supposed to vote as their party high-command decides. Leaders perform elaborate walk-outs that let them claim the higher ground and then do little about it after that. And everyone thinks everybody is conspiring with everyone else.

Last week one more ingenious script was added to the list, one that had all the right elements: curious bureaucratic traditions, a secret-in-name-only party rebellion, conspiracy allegations leveled at everyone, toying with public representatives and in the end, despite righteous indignation, one very happy businessman.

The errant pen
The Congress party lost an important election because its lawmakers used the wrong pen to vote.

A closely fought election to the Rajya Sabha – the only real political battle at the Centre right now because of the Bharatiya Janata Party's brute majority in the Lok Sabha – saw one seat decided entirely because of the wrong writing instrument.

What's going on?
Elections to 27 Rajya Sabha seats were held on Sunday. Two of those seats came from Haryana, where the BJP had enough numbers to pick up one seat and the Congress-Indian National Lok Dal alliance should have taken home the other.

Instead, the BJP won both the seats. One went to Union Minister Birender Singh, who was assured a win because of the BJP's numbers. The other seat – which should have been grabbed by the Congress-INLD combine – was instead picked up by BJP-supported industrialist Subash Chandra, chairman of the Essel group and Zee Media.

The official reason given was startling: 13 Congress votes had been declared invalid. One was disqualified because the ballot was shown to someone else before being cast and 12 others because they weren't marked with the requisite violet marker pen. In addition, one more ballot was found to have been left blank.

Without those votes, RK Anand, the independent candidate backed by the Congress-INLD alliance lost.

How did this happen?
In 2003, Rajya Sabha elections moved to the open ballot system. In an effort to "avoid cross-voting, to wipe out corruption and also to maintain the integrity of the democratic set-up", it was decided that election agents from each party should be able to look at the ballots of their lawmakers.

Although this doesn't outlaw cross-voting, it makes it easily identifiable and potentially even preventable. At the very least, the party agent – if she notices a number of lawmakers voting in a certain way – could lodge a complaint that can be taken up with Election Commission later on.

Congress general secretary BK Hariprasad was the official agent for his party in the Haryana election on Sunday. He must have been taken aback when results were announced and it emerged that the Congress-backed candidate had lost, because Hariprasad told the Indian Express that he had seen all the votes. "All have voted for Anand," he said.

What he evidently did not see was the colour of the ink on 12 of those ballots. Those turned out to not be from the official violet marker pen procured by election authorities, which lawmakers have to use while filling out their ballots.

According to authorities the ballots were filled out with the wrong pen, making them invalid.

So, who replaced the pen?
That depends on who you ask.

The Indian National Lok Dal, which proposed RK Anand's candidature and convinced the Congress to support him, blamed former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda for the mess. Hooda's camp was unhappy with the Anand arrangement from the beginning and, as it turned out, all 14 invalid votes came from lawmakers loyal to Hooda. The INLD believes the Hooda camp intentionally used a pen other than the one provided by the Returning Officer.

The Congress meanwhile blames the authorities and claims that the Returning Officer was involved. "It was a deliberate attempt by the returning officer to cancel our votes. It is a deliberate fraud," Hariprasad said in the aftermath. The party has even approached the Election Commission asking for an inquiry.

Anand, the candidate, himself claimed that the BJP pressured Hooda "because of the cases against him". He later took back his statement and went along with the Congress' demand for an inquiry, but Anand's initial theory was even more specific. He told the Indian Express that the pen was replaced with the "active connivance" of the Returning Officer while the Hooda camp lawmakers voted, and then the violet marker was put back in the booth before two other Congress legislators voted.

What actually happened?
A fait accompli. The wrong pen in many ways is simply a McGuffin – an ingenious way to achieve cross-voting without getting caught in the voting booth – but ultimately the effect is the same: The Congress candidate lost.

Meanwhile, Congress, and the Hooda camp in particular, gets to pretend as if there was a conspiracy and call for an inquiry that will go nowhere, because the Election Commission is not going to overturn an election after results have been declared.

The Hooda camp meanwhile has sent its message to the Congress High Command that it will not work with the INLD, which in some ways strays into the same political space that it occupied, and is a more natural ally of the BJP. The seriousness of this message comes with the realisation that the Hoodas were willing to sabotage a Rajya Sabha election to make their point evident, which means reprisal is also unlikely since the Congress is already battling factionalism just about everywhere else.

And at the end of the day, another wealthy businessman has made it into the Upper House.