Election Commission’s questionable conduct

Among issues that have caught media attention has been the EC’s perceived softness in attending to Opposition complaints over “hate speeches” and using “armed forces for political propaganda” by India’s two most powerful people, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah, even as it moved with alacrity against Opposition transgressions. Both Modi and Shah’s campaign rhetoric were often alleged to be violative of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) for elections

One of India’s enduring pieces of political lore is a conversation between BJP’s nonagenarian mentor-politician Lal Krishna Advani and Pakistan’s late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. With common Sindhi roots, when they got talking in that language, Bhutto asked: Why has India’s democracy succeeded and Pakistan’s failed? The reason Advani advanced was its independent Election Commission (EC). Sadly, the credibility of this Indian autonomous constitutional authority has been seriously questioned in Election 2019 as never before.

Reputed worldwide for conducting the world’s biggest, and largely peaceful ,balloting exercise involving 900 million people in widely diverse terrain, the threeman EC’s recent actions have stained its reputation for neutrality and impartiality.

Among issues that have caught media attention has been the EC’s perceived softness in attending to Opposition complaints over “hate speeches” and using “armed forces for political propaganda” by India’s two most powerful people, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah, even as it moved with alacrity against Opposition transgressions.

Both Modi and Shah’s campaign rhetoric were often alleged to be violative of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) for elections. Condoning these militated against the conduct of “free, fair and unbiased General Elections 2019.” Both men were indicted for violations by the EC in 2014 and a police report was filed against Modi as per law; however, the present EC chose this time to condone their much graver violations.

The judiciary’s unprecedented invasion on the EC’s turf was itself testimony to the election body’s questionable conduct. That the Supreme Court upheld the EC’s verdicts, and sections of the embedded media wrote editorials justifying them, has only deepened public apprehension about the integrity of key constitutional institutions in the country.

After five of the seven phases of 2019’s 39-day poll process were completed, the Supreme Court rejected a review plea filed by 21 opposition parties seeking increase in random matching of the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips with electronic voting machine (EVMs). This reflects a huge trust deficit between the EC and the Opposition parties.

The apex court had to remind the EC that it had ‘teeth’ and must use them. They were used, but partially, in a manner that invited dissent from one of the three members. The token punishment the EC handed out, of non-participation in campaigning for two or three days, was gamely breached in many cases. Religion, caste, the armed forces that are off limits under the MCC, were invoked in blatant violation. So was character assassination of even those long dead - resorted to, including by Modi.

The EC today faces challenges more daunting than what preceding Commissions faced. Gone are the days of mass electoral fraud when entire polling booths were ‘captured’ by political goons and doubts were raised about the genuineness of the black ink applied on the voter’s forefinger. Advances in communications technology have made campaign monitoring and regulation challenging to say the least. The existing legal framework is unable to keep pace with cash-rich and tech-savvy campaign cells of political parties.

EC has also to play the policeman. It has so far confiscated cash, gold and silver, liquor, drugs and other contraband worth INR 3,205 crore (USD 45 million), according to published data. N. Bhaskara Rao, Chairman, Centre for Media Studies, says what is confiscated is likely to be less than five per cent of what is spent by all the candidates and parties. The total expenditure of Election 2019 is estimated to be a staggering 50,000 crore rupees (over USD 7 billion), “which is the highest amount for any election in the world.”

S Y Quraishi, India’s 17th Chief Election Commissioner, said: “The 2019 general election will long be remembered not just for transgressions of the top political leadership, but also for the EC itself being put in the dock. The EC has repeatedly found itself at the receiving end of scathing attacks from the Opposition, the public, the media and the judiciary. This is unprecedented for what was until now the most trusted institution in the country.”