Shikha Mukerjee | Why ECs Too Are To Blame for India’s Worst Electoral Crisis

The total number of adults not eligible to vote in India, 13 crore by some accounts, which is 15 crore by others, is approximately the population of all men, women and children in countries like Mexico, Japan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. These adults are victims of the Election Commission of India’s purification of electoral rolls through a new fangled methodology, the software-driven Special Intensive Revision.

The innovations in use of technology and the “logical discrepancies” could have been, in the overwhelming majority of cases, rectified had human intelligence been applied by the electoral registration officers in conjunction with the block level officers, and that would have solved most of the problems. There is evidence to suggest that this is a truthful statement; in West Bengal, where the SIR controversy continues to rage, over 93 per cent of appeals to the Supreme Court-ordered adjudication tribunals, following discoveries of mostly “logical discrepancies,” have been found to have been filed by “eligible” voters. In other words, eligible voters were struck off the electoral rolls by the machinery of the ECI.

There are confirmations of reports that voters who exercised their vote in West Bengal have now found themselves scratched off the electoral rolls, post the May elections. Reckoned at its current speed of disposing appeals, the tribunals could take 12 years or more to restore voting rights to some 37 lakhs of voters in West Bengal. If this is the consequence of the ECI’s innovations in one of India, what then will happen to the 13 crore or 15 crore adults living with uncretainty as the thrid phase of SIR nears its end?

The question of who is responsible for this enormous mess is “problematic”, as Chirag Paswan, Union minister and leader of the Lok Janashakti Party, described it would be “if people begin to doubt the electoral process itself”. Is it the chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, or the trio, meaning the other two election commissioners, Messers Sandhu and Joshi, as well? The issue was raised by the news report in the Indian Express that, finally, shook the Indian political establishment which, it must be pointed out, already knew the consequences of the ECI’s decisions as the numbers of delisted voters zoomed. But was it just one man who led the assault on India’s free and fair election process or was it all three?

The simple answer is all three. Regardless of how culpable Gyanesh Kumar is, neither of the two ECs quit office for the misdemeanours of the Election Commission. It is the Election Commission which has acted against the interests of the people, meaning that national interest has been dangerously compromised by the decisions of the trio selected to see that the machinery of elections runs without a glitch. As many as 13 crore or 15 crore glitches are not a pardonable mistake; the magnitude points to a reckless abuse of power amounting to irresponsibility, at the root of which is the 2023 law giving immunity from consequences to the ECs for decisions taken.

If the two election commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, had differences with the chief election commissioner, who incidentally is not their boss, the difference between the three being of designation rather than authority, they had every reason, backed by the authority they enjoyed, to say so. Earlier election commissioners did. Legendary election commissioner T.N. Seshan challenged the appointment of M.S. Gill and G.V. Krishnamurthy. The Supreme Court rapped his knuckles for thinking his status was superior to his colleagues. In 2009, chief election commissioner N. Gopalaswami sent a 90-page report to the President asking for the removal of his colleague, election commissioner Navin Chawla.

Differences of opinion are routine in a collegium-style commission or judiciary or even the Cabinet or as is so public, inside corporate boardrooms as in the Tata Trusts-Tata Sons case. Dissent, in writing, is another matter. Taking responsibility for dissenting is one step up, where resignation is the usual action taken. Neither Mr Sandhu nor Mr Joshi resigned; hiding behind a leak, these two individuals, guilty of gross violation of the law, did not make their views public and fall on the sword, as it were. These two ECs actually wrote official memos to the Cabinet Secretary of India, knowing that it was a grave transgression of the autonomy principle that underlies the constitutional provision that set up the Election Commission in the first place.

Demanding the resignation or submitting a motion calling for the impeachment of CEC Gyanesh Kumar in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha is good politics. Punish the guilty is what the law does, and legislative power is all about making good laws. However, the impeachment in a sense, absolves the CEC and, in fact, the trio of all responsibility for the SIR mess and the crisis of confidence in the public mind about the impartiality, neutrality and basic competence of the Election Commission as an institution.

For the first time in independent India, the totality of all voters, 97.97 crore Indians in 2024, equal to the number of all adults resident in India, have lived with the uncertainty of being declared “ineligible”, and subject to the threat by Gyanesh Kumar endorsed by the Union home minister Amit Shah in Lok Sabha on December 10 that the purpose of the SIR process is to DETECT, DELETE, DEPORT. While detection and deletion are the usual job of the Election Commission — done through the now delayed Special Summary Revision and the additions that happen as a matter of routine during the usual Summary Revisions — deportation as a consequence of electoral roll revision was a new addition.

After DETECT and DELETE, that was normal revision process, the DEPORT was genuflection to the BJP’s political agenda of excluding allegedly two crore “ghuspaithiyas”, illegal Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh, who apparently had changed the “demography” of the border districts in Assam and West Bengal. The politics of demographic change posing a threat to the Hindu majority by the Muslim minority underlay the DEPORT conclusion to the Election Commission’s SIR exercise.

As the sole authority with discretionary power to confirm the documents that about 98 crore voters needed to submit to remain on the electoral roll, the Election Commission assumed more power that it can legitimately exercise. That is, it exceeded the limits, crossed lines and overstepped the limits the Constitution had set up to keep it impartial and autonomous. That means, the trio that leads the ECI wilfully damaged national interest, subverted democracy by restricting the rights of voters and, therefore, interfered with the outcome of elections.

That is emphatically not to argue that, had the SIR not happened, Bihar and West Bengal would not have turned saffron. It is merely to emphasise that the choice of BJP as ruling party in the two states would have been free and fair had the SIR not been “problematic”. Doubt is destructive of confidence and that applies to elections and the Election Commission.