Too much power

When T N Seshan took over as chief election commissioner, electoral malpractices were the norm

The Election Commission wants more teeth, the kind that will make dissenters think twice before daring to challenge it. It wants to be armed with contempt powers to punish those who tarnish its image and has sent this alarming proposal to the law ministry.
 
It is unfortunate that a robust body such as the Election Commission would have resorted to such a knee-jerk and poorly thought out response to accusations made by a clutch of political parties that lost ground in the recent elections.
 
Until this disquieting proposal, the Election Commission had fielded all accusations with the dignity and authority that become it. When some political parties, with the Aam Aadmi Party at the forefront, cried foul after the elections and alleged that the electronic voting machines had been tampered with, the Election Commission did precisely what it should have. It invited them to the “EVM Challenge”, providing, in its own words, “extensive opportunity to a challenger to handle the EVMs … in any number of combinations and use any manner of Bluetooth/wireless, et cetera to attempt to tamper the machines”.
 

Source: Reuters

That was the way to go: throw an open challenge at the challenger. So then how come it crumbled when an established mudslinger accused some of its members of being aligned to the ruling party at the Centre? Ideally, it should have ignored the accusation or dealt with it head-on. By asking for the kind of powers, which, in a democracy, are best not enjoyed by anyone, it has only done disservice to its stature as an upright, impartial body that enjoys enormous public confidence.
 
The Election Commission is already equipped with immense authority. Let us rejig our memory and go back to the time, 27 years ago, when one man invoked that authority to fix the mess that Indian elections then were.
 
When T N Seshan took over as chief election commissioner in December 1990, electoral malpractices were the norm. Booth-capturing, abuse of authority, goons threatening voters at polling stations, twisted voters’ list, fake voting — we had it all. And now we also had a man in charge who had never overseen an election. In an interview to Business Standard in 2012, Seshan admitted that when he assumed office, he didn’t know the rules or how the Election Commission operated.
 
So, he got down to work, starting with the painstaking task of issuing voter identity cards to all legal voters. Of course, there was resistance from politicians and their parties. Authoritarian, egotistical, publicity-hungry, they threw all possible names at him, including labelling him “Al-Seshan” (Alsatian). He disqualified thousands of potential candidates and in 1992 also cancelled the elections in Bihar and Punjab. So fed up were the politicians of him that some even tried to have him impeached.
 
Seshan stood his ground and went to the extent of announcing that no elections would be held after January 1, 1995 if voter I-cards were not issued. Eventually, the Supreme Court intervened. The government, too, succumbed to his demand. Then he got down to fixing election expenses.
 
All this he achieved without introducing any reform in the system. “I didn’t even add one comma, semicolon or a full stop to the Act [Representation of the People Act, 1951],” he said in the interview. All he did was implement the Act.
 
The Election Commission has since only built on that solid bedrock that Seshan provided.
 
In a democracy as complex and dynamic as India, elections are a constantly evolving process. Today we have EVMs. Yesterday we thought they were tamperproof and beyond manipulation. Today not everybody thinks so. This niggling doubt is the reason that a voter verifiable paper record is now being introduced to enable an EVM to record each vote cast by generating an EVM slip.
 
The idea is to make the systems more robust and foolproof. If criticism is what it takes to push such reforms, then criticism can’t be such a bad thing. Contempt power, which threatens to stifle criticism, is certainly not a tool one would want in the hands of an authority that is built to evolve with an evolving democracy.
 
Back in 1990, the Goswami Committee on Electoral Reforms had turned down a similar request saying, “The proposal for clothing the Election Commission with the power of contempt is not favoured.” Let us hope the law ministry will do the same.  veenu.sandhu@bsmail.in