By Maneesh Chhibber
As expected, within hours of the damning expose in The Indian Express on the strong opposition by two Election Commissioners – Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi – to the bull-headed manner in which controversial Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar was trying to run the Election Commission of India (ECI), unnamed “sources” within the ECI were cited by some journalists and channels to assert that “all decisions of the Election Commission of India, including the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voters, have been unanimous and with the approval of both the Election Commissioners and the Chief Election Commissioner”.
The sources and their information was too simplistic and did not pass the smell test, which any seasoned journalist worth their salt would have caught. But this article is not about the state of journalism in the country. It is, instead, about the complete absence of transparency and integrity in the country’s poll regulator, which is expected to work towards ensuring, to slightly modify the military parlance, that not one voter is left behind. In doing so, Gyanesh Kumar may have conveniently forgotten that he is first among equals – not the only one.
In the afternoon, the ECI issued a one-page press release which, expectedly, did not touch any of the issues raised by the ECs. The press release, like most things connected to the ECI these days, was an exercise in futility.
The CEC sems to have forgotten that the ECI remains a three-member collegiate body where every major decision is taken either unanimously or through majority.
Under Gyanesh Kumar, the focus of SIR seems to be to ensure ouster of as many voters as possible.
However, now even his shenanigans may be failing. Per the news reports, two ECs cast serious aspersions on the ongoing SIR, terming steps on new voters ‘unauthorised, illegal’ and warned against voter database access being ‘centralised’ in Delhi, bypassing state officials.
This isn’t the first time EC has come out as deeply divided. But it certainly is the most damaging. In earlier instances, the divide was over minor, administrative issues, but this time, the central issue seems to be the lack of faith that the two ECs have in the ability of the CEC to be impartial and transparent, even with them.
Since the issue of SIR is still pending final adjudication in the Supreme Court, here’s hoping the court will read the reports and then ask serious questions of the CEC over Kumar’s (mis)handling of the entire exercise and the fact that almost 13 crore voters have and could be denied their right to exercise their vote in the process.
1) To begin with, the Supreme Court bench could ask the ECI to make public and share with it the entire record of the to-and-fro between the CEC and ECs on the issue of the SIR and the manner in which it should proceed.
2) It could also ask the CEC to respond if he blatantly disregarded the views of the majority and decided on his own to proceed in a particular manner.
3) Is the ECI being truthful that “all decisions” of the ECI, including the ongoing SIR of voters, have been unanimous and with the approval of both the Election Commissioners and the Chief Election Commissioner? If this was the case, then what about the objections raised by the ECs? Or was it a unanimity of one, with only the CEC deciding for the ECI?
4) The CEC must also be asked to explain why, if true, he decided to unilaterally ignore the 14 objections to decisions taken without the knowledge of the two ECs.
5) He should also be asked to explain why he ignored demands from the other two ECs for a special audit on local officers being refused access to ECINet to add and delete names due to lack of access to voters’ list as provided under the law.
6) Gyanesh Kumar must also respond why, again against the opinion of the two ECs, the ECI persisted with amended Form 6, which asked all online applicants to prove their parents were on the voters’ list in 2002 even though this couldn’t have been done without amending the relevant law.
The Supreme Court could also ask the Cabinet Secretary, the country’s senior-most bureaucrat, to inform what action, if any, he took on the letter written on July 29 by Sandhu and Joshi, seeking his intervention over concerns over changes in work allocation among EC officers without their knowledge. Moreover, were the departure of two Deputy Election Commissioners – Gyanesh Bharti on August 10 and Sanjay Kumar on August 28 – linked to the damning letters sent by the two ECs?
For a long time, since it was turned into a three-member body, the ECI has followed the practice of meeting almost every day to discuss, deliberate and decide all pending issues. The public has the right to know how many times the trio met in the last one year, which issues they discussed and what decisions they took.
Maneesh Chhibber is a veteran journalist.
