The Election Commission and Opposition parties’ showdown came to a head on Sunday, with Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi launching his Voter Adhikar Yatra, and on the same day, the Election Commission held a press conference in an attempt to address some of the allegations they have faced from Opposition parties.
To be clear, there are two parts to this -- one is the ongoing Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls of Bihar that is being conducted ahead of the elections in Bihar to be held next year, and the second is the alleged manipulation of electoral rolls that was highlighted by Rahul Gandhi in his press conference in which he alleged large scale additions to the electoral roll and highlighted a constituency in Karnataka to prove his point.
However, what was most telling about the entire saga was how the Election Commission of India -- a constitutional body -- has reacted to its ongoing credibility crisis. A body that is tasked with ensuring free and fair elections in the country without any fear of favour has come across as a body that is not really interested in ensuring that elections are really free and fair, but instead has come across as one that more than being upfront about its moves and motives is trying to pretend that all is well in the face of mounting allegations. Take, for instance, the issue of the same voters being registered in multiple States and potentially voting in multiple States, as well as possibly voting in multiple phases of the same election in the same State. It was an allegation by the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha and comes on the back of allegations that elections in Maharashtra were manipulated via doctoring the electoral rolls that the Election Commission has refused to release in a manner that can be independently audited.
Rather than treating the issue with the seriousness, and treating the evidence as an opportunity to launch an investigation into the alleged manipulation of electoral rolls, the EC is trying to pretend the problem does not exist. It is nobody’s case that the electoral rolls are going to be perfect -- India is too large and a wide country for that. There will be multiple registered at the same address. It is definitely possible that the same person is registered at multiple places -- these inclusions can of-course slip in and could very well be inadvertent errors. But the manner in which the Election Commission is seeking to sweep the entire issue under the carpet, pretending that they have done no wrong and that everything is hunky dory, is a clear red flag that something is cooking behind the scenes.
It took the Supreme Court of India to direct the Election Commission to publish the record of the entire list of 65-lakh voters who were deleted in machine-readable format, along with reasons why they were deleted. If the ECI was really interested in proving before the people of India that it is acting in a free and fair manner with no ulterior motives, it would have been publishing this data of its own accord without having to be told to do so. The same goes for making electoral rolls in a machine-readable manner, at least to the political parties -- if not publishing them publicly, given the potential for misuse. After all, surely the ECI realises that ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant’.
