The Election Commission’s stonewalling of investigations into the Leader of Opposition’s electoral roll fraud claims threatens democratic accountability and electoral integrity
This would appear to be the wolf for real: red in tooth and claw, mouth slavering, a grey threat of stealth and menacing grace. Rahul Gandhi has cried wolf so many times that it is no surprise if many do not take him seriously when he raises the alarm.
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But this time does appear to be different, when he says there were 1,00,250 fake votes in the Mahadevapura Assembly constituency in Bangalore, detailing five categories of fraud: duplicate votes, fake or invalid addresses, implausibly large numbers of voters at particular addresses, invalid photos, and invalid enrollment making use of Form 6 meant for new voters and voters shifting from another constituency.
Electoral roll transparency
It would be perfectly fair for the woman in the street to show disdain for a blooper-prone Rahul’s concerns. But the EC is not the gender-non-specific individual in the street. The EC is a constitutional body. Rahul holds a constitutional office: the Leader of the Opposition. For the EC to dismiss or challenge Rahul’s allegations of electoral roll manipulation as wholly absurd is corrosive of democracy.
It is the EC’s responsibility to generate a valid list of all eligible voters. But once the electoral roll has been generated, why should it be a monopoly of the EC? It should be public property, accessible and downloadable by individuals, voluntary organisations, and, most certainly, by political parties. Parties should be able to download and generate as many copies of the electoral roll for each booth, assembly constituency, and parliamentary seat, and for the nation as a whole, as they please.
The EC should facilitate this process, rather than obstruct it. The draft list should be released early enough. This would leave a couple of months for parties and individuals to scrutinise the voters’ lists for each booth, constituency and district. They should have time to raise objections to false inclusions or meritless exclusions, and to have these objections resolved. That way, when elections are held, no one will have room for complaint about the voters’ list.
Seeking electoral accountability
It should be noted that the vote theft allegation does not implicate the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), and possible manipulations of votes cast on and stored in EVMs. That calls for a separate audit.
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The Leader of the Opposition has demanded that electoral rolls of past elections be made available for scrutiny, as also the closed-circuit TV footage inside polling booths. These are reasonable demands that can easily be met. For the future, the court should direct the EC to make the electoral rolls available to all parties in an electronic form, and to preserve, store and archive all CCTV footage, and make it available for contemporary scrutiny by stakeholders and future scrutiny by researchers.
Bihar voter exclusion
With regard to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar, the Opposition wants a list of all voters excluded from the electoral roll deemed valid before the SIR exercise. The EC has refused, arguing that it is not mandated by the law to do that. This is ridiculous. The law does not mandate the Election Commissioners to breathe, eat, sleep or do any of the things that normal people do to stay alive.
When 65 lakh people have been struck off the rolls by the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls in Bihar, if even a single eligible voter has been disenfranchised for no valid reason, it would subvert democracy and the EC’s mandate. For the EC to say that it would not make available the names of those who have been disenfranchised is wholly arbitrary and a misuse of its powers to conduct elections.
The Election Commission’s conduct points to a systemic deficit. All regulators have an appellate body that can scrutinise regulatory decisions and rectify errors. Above the appellate bodies is the Supreme Court, the final court of appeal.
The Comptroller and Auditor General’s reports are scrutinised by different committees of Parliament, to be validated or excoriated and dismissed for errors, although some occupants of that office have presumed to be the final arbiters of their reports and held press conferences to declare their arrogance.
Supreme Court intervention
The Election Commission alone has been given the freedom to go about its job without any specific restraint. This was fine when it went about its job in good faith. If that comes into question, as it has right now, it is dysfunctional to let the EC’s arbitrariness stand, just because in the constitutional scheme of things, it can do as it pleases with regard to elections. This must be remedied.
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We, the people of India, are the ultimate sovereign, who should be able to hold all organs of the state to account and to whom all organs of the state and their personnel owe allegiance. The Chief Election Commissioner and other commissioners must be required to periodically testify before a special committee of Parliament, whose members are authorised to question them, with the entire process televised, similar to Senate committee proceedings in the US. We do not want a legal vacuum that allows fawning bureaucrats, chosen by their political masters, to hold statutory office and turn into pettifogging potentates who use their office as a castle and the statute as a moat to keep the citizenry at bay while doing as they please.
That remedy will call for fresh legislation.
Right now, the Supreme Court alone can make the EC see reason and act reasonably and in accordance with the spirit of democratic fairness.
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