Will the 2019 election be remembered for the wrong reasons?

Non-transparent electoral bonds, 100% booths with VVPAT units but no auditing, mass deletion of names in electoral rolls, the curious conduct of the Election Commission etc. marked the 2019 poll

Will the 2019 election be remembered for the wrong reasons?
user

NH Political Bureau

When India became free after 200 years of British colonial rule and embarked on the road of a liberal democracy with universal adult franchise, the world was sceptical. But the first few general elections (it is the 17th General Election being held in 2019) converted several doubting Thomases.

One of them, former UK Prime Minister Anthony Eden, was so overwhelmed that he went on record to say, “Of all the experiments in government which have been attempted since the beginning of Time, I believe that the Indian venture into parliamentary government is the most exciting. A vast sub-continent is attempting to apply to its tens and hundreds of millions a system of free democracy which has been slowly evolved over the centuries in this small island, Great Britain. It is a brave thing to try to do so…” .

But while Indians can justly take pride in holding yet another election with 900 million people eligible to vote, there are doubts whether the electoral process has been vitiated. A number of issues have been raised to cast a shadow on the integrity of the general election. A few of these issues are the following:

TIME TO CONDUCT THE POLL: The Election Commission of India (ECI)has not succeeded in reducing the number of polling days. The two month long polling this time, many feel, was not warranted. In these days of better transport, better roads and better communication, there is no reason why the General Election cannot be conducted in a fortnight or so. As for security, around 100 new battalions of Central paramilitary forces have been raised during the last 15 years, which means that more security personnel are available for conducting the poll.


POLLING SCHEDULE: Eyebrows were raised this time at the polling schedule fixed by the ECI.

• One-day polling in Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and

Andhra Pradesh but seven-day polling in West Bengal and Bihar

• Polling in three phases in the Anantnag Lok Sabha constituency in J&K

• Decision not to hold the Assembly election in J&K though polling being conducted for the Lok Sabha

• Assembly election in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh were conducted on a single day but the Lok Sabha election is stretched over several phases.

• Odisha Assembly election last time was conducted in two phases. But despite no new law and order issue, polling days this time extended to four.

ELECTORAL ROLL: Despite enormous efforts and money spent by ECI, the voters’ roll still remains an issue with voters across the country complaining that they found their names missing though they had not changed their address and had voted at the same booth earlier. There have been complaints of families having Aadhar numbers and having cast their votes earlier failing to do so this time. Prannoy Roy in his book on elections also points to 21 million missing women from the rolls. No action has ever been taken by the ECI to fix accountability for these lapses and punish those who are responsible.


IMPARTIAL POLLING STAFF?: As many as 12 million central and state government employees and security personnel are deployed to conduct the polling. Nobody from the private sector is engaged because their impartiality is apparently unverifiable. But the premise that government employees are non-partisan and neutral is not necessarily correct. In fact, many of them would be susceptible to pressure put on them by the ruling party. All the more reason why it is time for the ECI to experiment with volunteers, college students, retired employees and ex-servicemen to conduct the polling.

INTEGRITY OF THE ELECTORAL ROLL: How can voters satisfy themselves that the electoral roll made available at the polling booths are authenticated by the ECI? Is it possible for unscrupulous elements to create mirror images of the electoral roll, add or delete names after profiling voters, which is becoming easier by the day? The ECI has been dismissive of complaints of missing voters or duplicate voters, usually claiming that such instances are rare, isolated and negligible. But doubts remain and need to be addressed urgently.

MATCHING VVPAT SLIPS WITH EVM COUNT: A retired DGP in Assam discovered to his chagrin that the VVPAT was showing a different name than the one he had pressed on the EVM. When he complained, he was told that he was free to file a formal complaint but he would be jailed if the inquiry revealed the complaint to be false or frivolous. He gave up the idea of lodging a complaint and wondered how a post-facto inquiry could be conducted. VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Trail) was ordered by the Supreme Court in 2013 and the government finally released Rs 3000 crore for VVPATS in 2017. In Assembly elections thereafter, the ECI has been matching VVPAT slips with the EVM count in only one polling booth in each constituency. Following a petition to the Supreme Court by 21 Opposition parties seeking matching in half the booths, the court ordered the count to be raised to five booths in each Assembly constituency. A Review Petition is pending before the apex court, where the ECI has pleaded that results would then be delayed by five days.

ELECTORAL BONDS: The Modi government has done away with restrictions on corporate donations to political parties and ensured privacy of the donors by making Electoral Bonds ‘anonymous’. Money can now come to political parties from shell companies, from foreign companies and from Indian companies without people, parliament or the courts ever getting to know from where the donations came and what kind of favours were granted. The Electoral Bond has been challenged in vain in the Supreme Court and the 2019 General Election would forever be tainted by far from transparent political funding that Arun Jaitley had promised while introducing the system of electoral bonds in his Budget speech.

TOTALISERS: The ECI’s proposal to use Totalisers to mix votes cast in 14 booths before counting them was meant to ensure anonymity of the voters. Mixing the votes would have prevented political parties, especially the ruling party, from learning the voting behavior of particular booths and villages. But the Modi government turned down the proposal. The casual statement of Union Minister Maneka Gandhi that she would get to know whether villages have voted for her or not and depending on that, villages would be classified into categories in terms of priority, points to the need for Totalisers. Their absence has vitiated the election this time.

Three basic and reasonable demands of the ECI have been ignored by the political establishment. It has been demanding financial independence on the lines of CAG and has been asking that its expenses be charged to the Consolidated Fund of India. That would have reduced its dependence on the government for funds.

The ECI has also been asking for an independent secretariat so as to reduce the influence and interference by the DoPT under the PMO in matters of appointment and promotion. Finally, the ECI has been demanding the authority to make rules related to elections.

There has been growing and brazen interference by the present NDA government in the functioning of the ECI. The Modi government delayed sanctioning funds for VVPAT and arm-twisted the ECI into giving its consent to simultaneous Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. The then CEC HS Brahma went on record in 2015 to note that the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, Nripendra Mishra, had told him that holding too many elections was disruptive and cost money. The outrage was short-lived.

The last four years have shown over and over again how weak and helpless the ECI actually is. It can bark but not bite. It has been unable to ensure a level playing field. It has failed to curb fake news and money power. It has not been able to prevent the PM from flouting restrictions and campaigning on even polling days. And it has not been able to stop the live broadcast of political rallies on TV channels on polling days.

Follow us on: Facebook, Twitter, Google News, Instagram 

Join our official telegram channel (@nationalherald) and stay updated with the latest headlines