Election
Commission in the Dock
The Constitutional bodies are independent and
insulated against arbitrary actions of the Executive. The pillars of democracy
– Legislature, Judiciary and the Press- are expected to be neutral and non-partisan
in discharging their duties as their appointments, tenure and service
conditions do not depend on the whims and fancies of the government. As per the
fundamental Right to Freedom, as outlined in Article 19(1)(a), the Press is free. A free Press is a sine qua non to check
abuse of power by the executive and the bureaucracy.
However, the government of the day doesn’t honour the
provisions of the constitution and the institutions are under pressure to act
according to its diktats. They have quickly adapted India's 'new normal' and learnt
to be pliable in order to survive. For
instance, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha,Om Birla, is restraining from asking the Lok Sabha to choose
a Deputy Speaker because the ruling dispensation is not interested in having one. It is constitutionally
mandatory to have a Deputy Speaker. The Article 93 of the Constitution mandates that “The House of the People shall, as soon as may be, choose two members of
the House to be respectively Speaker and Deputy Speaker thereof and, so often
as the office of Speaker or Deputy Speaker becomes vacant.” This was an established
practice till the 16th Lok Sabha.
This constitutional provision is violated by the Modi government with impunity. The 17th Lok Sabha didn’t have a Deputy Speaker, and Om Birla as the Speaker, employed high-handed tactics to silence dissent. He expelled more than 140 MPs in one go to ensure the draconian criminal laws were passed without discussion and debate, with the entire opposition walking out. And the present 18th Lok Sabha, of which he is the Speaker for a second term, Deputy Speaker is not chosen even after year.
The institution of parliament is downsized. The government doesn’t want
to have a Deputy Speaker as, by the parliamentary convention, the post will go
to the principal opposition party the Congress or a member of the INDIA bloc. The
Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge has written a letter on 10 June 2025 to
Narendra Modi urging him to initiate the process of electing a Deputy Speaker,
reminding him that it is the first time in independent India’s history that the
post of Deputy Speaker remained vacant under his regime for the two consecutive
terms.
Another Constitutional authority the Election Commission of India - the soul of democracy - is under severe strain. The Part XV of the Constitution makes the Election Commission totally independent, and the Commission is expected to conduct free and fair elections to Parliament and state Legislatures - the bedrock of democracy- without fear or favor. Yet, the Election Commission has come under severe scrutiny for its failure to act independently as a neutral and impartial umpire.
The election process is
questioned by the opposition parties. It is found wanting in giving
satisfactory explanation on the issues raised by the Opposition – be it the announcement
of dates for elections, the malfunctioning of the EVMs, the fake and
manipulative electoral rolls, the deleting and including names of voters from
the voters’ lists, the enforcing of the model code of conduct and the like,
raising serious doubts about the transparency in the functioning of the
Election Commission and its accountability.
Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha, has been questioning the manner in which the elections were conducted for the Maharashtra State Assembly in November last year. He said his party doesn’t accept the result of the election marred by electoral malpractices. He repeated this charge in the Lok Sabha on February 3, and at various public forums and in his interactions with the students and the faculty and the intelligentsia at the Brown University in the United States on April 21. His article Match-fixing Maharashtra, in The Indian Express on June 7, 2025 – translated into major Indian languages – has created a stir across India. He made serious charges against the Election Commission of failing to conduct free and fair election in Maharashtra- the most populous state after Uttar Pradesh.
In the article, he made five specific charges against the
Election Commission:
Charge 1: Rig the panel for the appointment of
umpires:
The 2023 Eection Commissioner Appointment Act ensured that Election Commissioners are effectively chosen by the Prime Minister and the Home Minister by a 2:1 majority since the third member, the Leader of the Opposition, could always be outvoted. This is what actually happened in selecting Gyanesh Kumar as the new Chief Election Commissioner in February 2025 despite the Leader of the Opposition's dissent. They are choosing their own umpires in a contest where they are the top contestants.
The decision to place a cabinet minister instead of the
Chief Justice of India on the selection committee does not pass the smell test.
Why should someone go out of the way to remove a neutral arbiter in an
important institution? The Committee that selects Election Commissioners
excludes the Chief Justice of India. On March 2, 2023, a 5-Judge
Constitution Bench led by Justice KM Joseph ordered that the selection committee
should comprise of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the
Chief Justice of India. This order of the apex court was just ignored.
Charge 2: Inflate the voter
register with fake voters
The Election Commission (EC) data
show that the number of registered voters, in Maharashtra in the 2019 Assembly
election was 8.98 crore which rose five years later to 9.29 crore by the 2024
Lok Sabha election...And five months later by the November 2024 Assembly
election, the number had leaped to 9.70 crore - a crawl of 31 lakhs in five
years, then leap of 41 lakhs in just five months. So incredible was this leap
that the registered voter total of 9.70 crore was even greater than the
9,54-crore adults in Maharashtra. It is a clear case of electoral fraud.
Charge 3: Inflate voter turnout
figures on top of an inflated voter base
To most participants and
observers voting day in Maharashtra appeared to be completely normal. As they
do elsewhere, voters queued up, voted and went home. Those voters who had
entered polling booths by 5 pm were permitted to stay until they had voted.
There were no reports of unusually long queues or crowding at any voting booth.
The polling turnout at 5 pm was 58.22 per cent. Even after voting closed,
however, turnout kept increasing more and more. The final turnout was reported
only the next morning to be 66.05 per cent. This unprecedented increase of
around 8 per cent is equivalent to 76 lakh voters, much higher than the previous
Assembly elections. For instance, the
difference between provisional and final turnout of vote percentage is -0.50,1.08,
and 0.54 in 2009, 2014 and 2019 respectively, in the Maharashtra Assembly elections.
Charge 4: Pinpoint targeted
bogus voting turned BJP into Bradman
There are about 1 lakh booths
in Maharashtra, but most added voters were targeted in only about 12,000 booths
across 85 constituencies where the BJP had performed poorly in the last Lok
Sabha elections. That is an average of over 600 voters at each booth after 5
pm. The EC described the sharp increase in voters as “a
welcome trend in participation of youth.” Apparently, this welcome trend was
restricted to 12,000 booths and not observed in the remaining 88,000 booths- an
amusing joke if it were not tragic. The BJ:P bagged 132 out of the 149 seats it
contests in the 2024 Assembly election, an unprecedented and unbelievable
strike rate of around 90 per cent. The BJP’s strike rate in the Lok Sabha
elections, only five months earlier, was 32 per cent.
Charge 5: Conceal the evidence trail
The Election Commission met all Opposition queries
with silence and even aggression. It summarily dismissed requests to make
available voters rolls with photos for the 2024 Lok Sabha and the Assembly
Elections. Even worse, only one month after the Maharashtra Assembly election,
and following the Punjab and Haryana High Court Order December 9,2024, invoking
the 1961 rule book directing the EC to submit videography,
CCTV footage and copies of papers relating to votes cast at a polling station,
the Government, with the approval of the EC, amended the 1961
Conduct of Election Rules, Section 93(2)(a) to restrict access to CCTV footage
and electronic records, nullifying the High Court Order, in an attempt to cover
up and shield the EC.
The Leader of the Opposition, in conclusion, argues: “Voter
rolls and CCTV footage are tools to be used to strengthen democracy, not
ornaments to be locked up while democracy is violated. The people of India have
a right to be assured that no records have been or will be trashed. There
exists an apprehension in many quarters that evidence of other fraudulent
practices like targeted voter deletion and booth displacement may emerge from
the examination of records. There is apprehension that this election rigging
playbook has been in play for years. Doubtless, the examination of records will
also throw up the modus operandi and the cast of complicit characters. However,
the Opposition and the public are blocked at every turn from accessing these
records...rigging is like match-fixing… Match-fixed elections are a poison for
any democracy.”
As expected, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra
Fadnavis and the Union Minister Bhupender Yadav and the BJP President J.P Nadda
have jumped the gun. They have come out with bizarre stories in the Media, hurling all sorts of abuses against Rahul Gandhi, defending the EC, perhaps relying on unsigned evasive notes
passed on by some people purportedly from the EC. Why are the BJP and
its leaders answering on behalf of the Election Commision of India?
The Election Commission is in the Dock. It must squarely answer point by point the issues raised by the LoP and place it in public domain. It cannot deny the updated voters lists, the CCTV footage and the electronic records etc. of the Lok Sabha and the Assembly elections of 2024 in Maharashtra, under the garb of “protecting the integrity of elections and the privacy of voters.”
All that is demanded is a booth-wise voters list and electronic records in readable format. No one is
asking the EC to give the information of which voter voted for which
party. There is no question of encroaching on the privacy of somebody. The EC should know that, under the RTI, there is no such thing
as secrecy in the conduct of public functionaries. And the public authorities, more so the EC, are expected to be transparent and accountable for their actions. The Election Commission of India must not be seen being subservient to the government, forgetting its
constitutional obligation of conducting free and fair elections, and of acting
as an impartial umpire, to keep the people’s faith in democracy and the electoral
process. And evading will not protect its crediility in as
much as telling the truth.
The charges against the Election Commisssion by the Leader of the Opposition are too serious. Supreme Court must take suo motu cognizance of the charges and order an independent inquiry to safeguard democracy and its institutions. It is not cheating of small-scale, but of ‘industrial scale rigging'.
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