CEC Gyanesh Kumar presser: Barbs for Rahul, answers for none

Beleaguered by a united Opposition’s tirade against its alleged collusion with the BJP in rigging electoral rolls to “steal votes” for the ruling party, the Election Commission (EC) finally addressed the media on Sunday (August 17). However, if the expectation from the poll panel was to come clean on the mounting accusations of partisan conduct directed at it by the Opposition, these were spectacularly let down by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar.

In his over an hour-long interaction with the media, which came hours after Lok Sabha’s Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi and Bihar’s Leader of Opposition, Tejashwi Yadav launched their 'Voter Adhikar Yatra' in Sasaram, Bihar, Kumar did face a volley of questions. Yet, the answers from the CEC were high on bluff and bluster; replete with thinly veiled jibes at Rahul and the wider Opposition, and low on substance.

CEC relies on 3 pillars

What had preceded the press conference for the last several days were legitimate questions and serious concerns over the EC’s ongoing exercise of a special intensive revision (SIR) of poll-bound Bihar’s electoral rolls, which is currently under challenge in the Supreme Court, revelations by Rahul of perceived irregularities in electoral rolls and accusations by the Opposition of the EC aiding the BJP in “vote chori” (vote theft).

Also read: EC press conference | CEC to Rahul: Submit affidavit within 7 days or allegations will be considered

Kumar’s answers to these burning issues relied on three pillars. Firstly: questioning the integrity of the Election Commission is akin to insulting the Indian voter and the entire apparatus involved in conducting elections. Secondly: the EC will not acknowledge any irregularities unless the allegations are submitted in a prescribed format. Lastly: weaponising the Supreme Court’s privacy judgment to obfuscate and deflect any call for transparency.

Ignoring the large-scale discrepancies reported by journalists, activists and the very voters whose voting rights the CEC repeatedly claimed to protect, Kumar sought to convey that problem concerning the SIR in Bihar, in particular, and preparations of electoral rolls in general was entirely a figment of the Opposition’s collective imagination.

The CEC glossed over the pointed questions its counsel had to face in the Supreme Court during multiple hearings in the Bihar SIR case with regard to the haste with which the exercise was being conducted ahead of the Assembly polls, the mass deletion of over 65 lakh voters from the electoral rolls and the need to provide political parties searchable draft rolls.

No clear answer on voter roll purification

Instead of directly responding to queries on why the poll body was undertaking the evidently massive exercise of purifying the voter rolls just months ahead of the Assembly elections in Bihar, Kumar asked the media whether the exercise should be conducted before or after the elections. There was no clear reply from the CEC on whether the insistence for voter roll purification now only strengthened the Opposition’s argument that voting in the Lok Sabha polls held last year was done on the basis of questionable electoral rolls.

Also read: Voter Adhikar Yatra: Won't let 'conspiracy' to 'steal' Bihar polls succeed, says Rahul

The CEC also, understandably, made no reference to the raging controversy over deletion of eligible voters by declaring them “dead” in the SIR nor did he offer any plausible explanation of how the Special Summary Revision (SSR), concluded in January this year, had missed the presence of not a few thousand but as many as 22 lakh “dead” voters in Bihar’s voter rolls as pointed out by the intensive revision now.

Kumar’s response to queries on each of these issues was either that the poll body’s mandate to conduct the SIR cannot be questioned or that it was the responsibility of political parties and their booth agents to have the mistakes in the electoral rolls rectified within the next 15 days. In making this appeal, the CEC not only confirmed problems with the draft electoral rolls but, more worryingly, suggested that these irregularities will not be rectified suo motu by the EC if the political parties or excluded voters themselves did not seek redressal.

Even more troubling was the CEC assertions about the Opposition “firing at the country’s voters from the shoulders of the EC”; a statement eerily reminiscent of the way the BJP equates any dissent or probing questions directed at Prime Minister Narendra Modi or his central government with an affront to the country and its institutions.

Kumar flaunts institutional arrogance

The poll panel chief’s summarily dismissed the serious allegations made by the Lok Sabha’s LoP about addition of one lakh doubtful voters in the electoral rolls of Karnataka’s Mahadevapura Assembly segment as being “misleading”. Instead of institutional accountability, Kumar chose to flaunt institutional arrogance by asserting that the poll panel will not inquire into the allegations because Rahul had not made them on oath, as asked by the EC, and declared that “if they are not submitted on oath within the next seven days then we will consider the allegations misleading and the person (Rahul) should apologise to the country”.

Also read: Supreme Court directs EC to publish list of 65 lakh deleted voters

What Kumar refused to explain, despite multiple queries, was why the poll panel had not followed the same rule of seeking allegations under oath when former Union minister and BJP MP Anurag Thakur made similar claims of “lakhs of fake voters” being added to the electoral rolls of constituencies represented by Opposition leaders Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi, Abhishek Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav, Dimple Yadav and MK Stalin. Kumar said the EC adopts a “graded response” to allegations made against its functioning but left unexplained how it chose to view the accusations hurled by Rahul as being different from those made by Thakur.

Kumar, perhaps, did not realise that in his eagerness to dismiss all allegations of irregularities in electoral rolls as being “politically motivated”, he only ended up confirming that there were indeed issues of people being registered as voters multiple times. “The Constitution and the law allow one person to cast only one vote... if an individual is registered as a voter multiple times, he will only be able to vote once,” Kumar said, adding that those raising questions at the poll body had “confused the electoral roll (matpatra) with the actual voting (matdaan)”.

What Kumar left unaddressed was the Opposition’s allegation that multiple registrations of the same voter was a cover for allowing multiple votes to be cast illegally by agents of political parties in collusion with poll officials. The CEC’s final assertion that an SIR is the “only solution” to all problems and allegations raised by the Opposition was a clear indication that the poll panel has chosen a path of confrontation against its critics. The Opposition, as Rahul and Tejashwi’s Bihar Voter Adhikar Yatra suggests, won’t pull back its punches.