As elections to three crucial State Assemblies, where the BJP is the incumbent ruler, draw near, opposition parties are seeking to up the ante over issues such as the ‘unreliability’ of electronic voting machines (EVMs). Over the last four years, during which period opposition parties have suffered many major electoral defeats, the demand for a return to the discredited old ballot box system has been repeatedly made. It may seem understandable for opposition parties to find excuses for their continuing failures in polls. But what is worrisome is that, that campaign has now assumed a shape which questions the very credibility of the non-partisan Election Commission of India (ECI).
The Chief Election Commissioner recently commented that, when political parties find the going tough, they begin to raise fingers at the poll panel over various matters. The Election Commission had repeatedly made elaborate attempts to allay fears on voting machines. It even arranged for a meeting in which political parties were invited to participate and demonstrate how the EVMs could be hacked to favour a particular party. Nearly none of the parties, particularly those who were the loudest in their condemnation of the EVMs, turned up. And yet they have continued to discredit the system, and the Election Commission in the process.
Obviously, these parties do not care for the fact that the Election Commission of India has built a reputation for itself in not just India but across the globe. Several nations have sought the poll panel’s guidance in conducting elections in a free and fair manner. There will be few election commissions in the world that are saddled with responsibilities of the kind that the Election Commission of India has — in demographic ways, in terms of the multitude of parties that contest, the statistical challenges, in maintenance of law and order, in enforcement of the code of conduct, etc. The irony is that when the Election Commission of India, many years ago before TN Seshan as Chief Election Commissioner began to crack the whip and almost overnight transformed the poll panel from a toothless tiger to a tiger that bit, and bit hard, political parties had no issues with the body. Today, when the commission has become a force to reckon with, when it has over the past two decades successfully implemented one of the biggest reforms in the electoral process through the introduction of EVMs, political outfits have innumerable complaints against it.
The opposition parties’ anger is such that they have taken the legal recourse to demean the Election Commission of India’s image in courts. The idea is to encircle the poll panel in legal ways and make it sound defensive. These parties have now begun to tell — command, not advice even — the Election of India how to conduct elections! Take a petition that has been filed in the Supreme Court by the Congress chiefs of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh — Sachin Pilot, Kamal Nath and Bhupesh Baghel, respectively . These States vote for a new Assembly later this year, and have BJP Governments for now. It is said that the outcome here could set the tone for the bigger, 2019 Lok Sabha battle.
Congress leaders, in claims and demands raised in their petition, extended their distrust of the ECI to beyond the EVMs. They have said that the poll panel was not taking adequate steps to ensure free and fair Assembly elections — a serious charge. They claimed that the ECI was not working in the direction of identifying and weeding out duplicate and fake voters. Kamal Nath, eager to demonstrate his usefulness at a stage when his chief ministerial candidature, being pushed forward by his camp that is is facing a challenge from rival groups in Madhya Pradesh, said he had made a detailed presentation to the poll panel on the matter, but nothing came out of it. The ECI, on its part, clarified to the court that it had probed the allegations the Congress leader had made,and found them to be unsustainable. It said the petition was “misconceived” and — more seriously — a “gross abuse of the process of the law”.
Of course, the Congress is not alone in resorting to the ploy of discrediting the Election Commission of India; other parties such as the Samajwadi Party and the BSP too have been shouting themselves hoarse on the issue of ‘compromised’ EVMs. Not surprisingly, these are also parties that have been the biggest losers in the recent years. It would serve the interests of those grumblers to focus on winning over the people’s confidence rather than wasting their energies on targeting the Election Commission of India which, like our courts, command a high level of credibility — and is open to suggestions for further improvement in its performance.
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