A defining moment for the Election Commission

• Demand that Rahul Gandhi should make his charges against ECI under oath or apologise to the nation indicates unease within the ECI in the face of seemingly credible questions on integrity of poll process

• 'Regular, free and fair' are non-negotiables for that integrity. When fairness is suspect, regularity becomes meaningless and ‘free’ becomes a hollow term

• The ECI and how it conducts itself will be seen not only in today’s context but also remembered and recalled years from now

The response of the Election Commission of India to Rahul Gandhi’s detailed, well researched presentation raising specific concerns that go to the very heart of the working of India’s elections system is shocking, to say the least. The ECI, working under three worthy commissioners, has no reason to turn this into a slanging match with the Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition.

The ludicrous demand put up by the chief electoral officer of Karnataka and two other states that Gandhi should sign off the charges under oath or apologise to the nation only indicates the unease within the ECI in the face of what to the common eye are credible questions and valid concerns on the integrity of the poll process.

Ideally, it should be in the interest of the ECI to set up a task force and get to the bottom of this in a timely manner that satisfies all parties and lays all doubts to rest or results in corrective action. This investigation ought to be no less serious and rigorous than the election process is meant to be.

After all, what is in doubt is not just the outcome of one seat with fake voters, as Gandhi has been able to conclusively show with respect to the Mahadevapura Assembly segment in Bengaluru Central Lok Sabha constituency, but the very future of Indian democracy.

Every Indian, irrespective of political colour or party of preference, would agree that at the heart of India’s constitutional democracy is a national commitment to conducting elections that are regular, free and fair. These are also the words headlined on the ECI website under its link titled 'Election Management'.

This is now looking more like election mismanagement, less in the sense of slackness and more in the sense of sinister. 'Regular, free and fair' are three non-negotiables required for the integrity of the process. When fairness of the process is suspect, regularity of the process becomes meaningless and ‘free’ becomes a hollow term.

Further, as anyone can plainly see, fairness is not only in the formality of the paperwork or the closed confines of Election Commission offices or records. The process must also be seen to be fair, for which we need an ECI that is transparent and sensitive to the fears of those who have increasingly begun to doubt the process, not just now but over the last several years.

It is also surprising that the BJP has come to the rescue of the ECI, which does disservice to the BJP as well as to the ECI in that it feeds into other fears of cosiness that erodes further trust in the process. The bitterness of the attacks on Rahul Gandhi, including by Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis of the BJP, indicate just how much the voter list fraud exposé by Gandhi has angered the BJP.

Maharashtra is the state where ground reports indicated that the BJP would take a huge hit in the 2024 Assembly polls, and would be penalised for its role in splitting the Shiv Sena, taking the breakaway group of Eknath Shinde-led MLAs to BJP-ruled states of Gujarat and Assam, and then successfully toppling the Uddhav Thackeray government.

Most observers could read the anti-BJP sentiment. But the results that brought Fadnavis to power, with the BJP bagging 132 of 288 Assembly seats, in an alliance with a breakaway Shiv Sena group that was declared the default Shiv Sena, surprised many.

What should be the road ahead if India is not to collapse as a democracy First, the election commissioners should commit to the nation that all data on record — including voter lists, polling records, video recordings, all camera feeds and paper trails as well as EVM machines — will be preserved and available for a full-fledged inquiry at any future date.

The process of such preservation should be independently audited and timelines must now stretch well beyond those specified in rule books since we are living through unusual circumstances and very serious allegations from a major Opposition party.

Original files need to be encrypted and vaulted. This will assure the nation that even if something has gone wrong in the field, including any concerted attempt by interested parties to defeat the process, the ECI is serious about getting to the bottom of it. It allows the ECI to separate itself from the political fight and stand apart with professional pride.

Second, there is no reason why soft copies of voter lists should not be made available with immediate effect. If, for some reason, these are not available, then prints provided to the Leader of Opposition ought to be, at a minimum, machine-readable. Why would the ECI not do so?

Third, the hastily conducted Bihar Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is fraught. There is enough material now from the ground to indicate that new names could be added without adequate verification so that those that may not qualify will become voters, while at the same time, many marginal groups run the risk of being disenfranchised.

Lakhs of names on draft rolls have house numbers reported to be zero. The data on the revised rolls has again been made non-machine readable. Downloading the SIR draft revised rolls show the zero house numbers in many cases, but it is not possible to count the numbers automatically because the file is not machine-readable.

Given the circumstances, from Gandhi’s allegations on vote theft to ground reports from Bihar, it appears difficult to escape the thought that there is something very rotten in the State of Denmark.

The ECI leadership should know and understand that this is an important moment in the history of free India. The people in charge of the ECI and how they conduct themselves will be seen not only in today’s context but also be remembered and recalled years from now.

When the very foundations of elections were under threat, what did the most important free institution charged with conducting elections do? What does a free and fair election mean? Can names be added without due scrutiny or excluded without valid reasons, when house numbers are marked as zero in the tens of thousands?

If the voter list is vitiated, then Indian democracy is effectively erased. India will be stripped of its most valuable jewel — a democratic process that the world admires and every Indian has been proud of. The ECI must act fast.

Views are personal

Jagdish Rattanani is a journalist and faculty member at SPJIMR. More of his writing may be found here

Article courtesy: The Billion Press