"By any reckoning, the otherwise unmanageable electoral process in the country has undergone massive reforms over the past two decades in particular. Between them, the constitutionally-mandated Election Commission (EC) and the Supreme Court (SC) stepped in when an inevitable void emerged on the Executive side, owing also to a weakening of the political leadership and polity at large. It also facilitated the cleaning-up process, at times with overzealous and political ambitious EC mandarins using the broom in one great sweep.
Now that the Indian poll process is as clean as they can come, it may be time to look inward at the existing processes and revise certain provisions to make them more meaningful and sustainable. For instance, the 21-day campaign period now being offered to candidates and political parties after the closing of nominations may have already caused a myriad of problems, both for the polity and political administration, not to mention the political parties and candidates concerned.
For starters, the current scheme has denied a level-playing field for independents and party-rebels, with limited resources, to compete as equals or even near-equals in hotly-contested elections. With the Independents getting to know their election symbol only with the final list of approved candidates, not one of them stand a real chance of even competing with political party leaders with registered symbols, leave aside the organisational structure at their command.
Political parties may be shy of saying so, and civil society groups are over-zealous themselves in guarding the self-sustaining rights of the EC, with a strong backing from the SC. Yet, for constituencies with upward of 1.5-million voters, to expect a party or candidate to reach out to the voter, that too with campaign-time deadline for the day ending at 10 pm, is both unimaginative and impractical. This needs to be rectified.
As the experience of the post-reforms electoral scene has indicated, parties and candidates, especially those with hopes of forming a government or becoming the chief political administrator (be it the prime minister at the Centre, or chief minister in the States) have begun their campaign months, if not years, ahead of the polls. This may have sustained and facilitated the growth and prosperity of big-time media industry across the country and across the State(s) concerned, but it may have squandered away initiatives and time that the political administrators and governments should have otherwise expended on enlightened governmental programmes, from planning, to funding, to project-execution and possible completion.
In the process, governmental programmes also tend to become populism-driven for no fault of the political class after a point. Given that in most States, governments keep changing with each election to the State Assembly, and gets weakened with intervening elections to the Lok Sabha or State Assemblies in the immediate neighbourhood, the inherent temptation for some sections of the political class to suspect every project of the rival party in power as corruption-initiated and scrap them on returning to office, has done a huge dis-service, in turn.
Always on the election-mode
It does not stop there. Though 'general elections' had initially comprised simultaneous polls to the Lok Sabha and all the State and Union Territory Assemblies across the country, all at one go and on a single day, over the years and decades, this practice went out of vogue, owing to justifiable and not-so-justifiable reasons. This staggering of elections has meant that the nation is almost always on the election-mode.
Given the increasing regionalisation of national politics and power-structures within the government and outside at the Centre, with reflected issues and concerns at the regional and sub-regional levels, nothing moves in the nation without an eye on one impending election or the other, in one or other part of the country. This trend too needs to be reversed.
The 'why' of it is clear, but the 'how' of it needs to be discussed and debated at the national-level before an acceptable method is evolved and experimented before incorporating the same in the Constitution. Can a one-time constitutional amendment be cleared, or a one-time judicial intervention sought before the next round of parliamentary polls become due, to make it mandatory for elected legislative bodies across the country to elect a new prime minister or chief minister from within the existing legislature, without having to force a new round of elections, which alone upsets the national scheduling of fixed-time elections?
Despite criticisms to the contrary, regionalisation of national politics has brought with it the benefit of minimum floor-crossing at all levels, as each party boss, particularly that of those heading a government at the Centre, is wary of upsetting such other party bosses, both within a State or outside. They are not sure who will be their alliance-partner or who will be their electoral adversary the next day. Coupled with the Supreme Court's landmark judgment in the 'S R Bommai case' (1994), the time may now be right for attempting something of a kind, to check against continual elections in one or another party of the country.
Single-day voting
Through 60 long years of our electoral democracy, India has had a single-day voting only on one, singular occasion. All others have been multi-phased elections, with Elections-2014 spread across nine phases of polling, spread across five weeks. It was fine to have a six-month schedule for the first General Election of 1951-52, which was a logistical nightmare with no experience or expertise available to the electoral machinery in the newly-independent nation that conferred franchise on all adult citizens, a great reform and boon in itself.
However, decades down the line, in the IT era, the misuse and abuse of multi-day polling is here for all to see. It was thus that in 1991, we had an BC/AD kind of elections, 'before' and 'after' the Rajiv Gandhi assassination. Elections-2014 has clearly witnessed political parties and leaders strategising for individual phases and reserving their political venom for a future phase even while presenting a sober face for earlier or particular phases. This by itself should be a 'fraud' on the election and electoral process. Though the publication of exit-poll results are banned, their usage for strategising for the future phases cannot be banned, and have had a deleterious effect in vitiating the entire poll process as a whole.
This could mean that the Election Commission and the Centre would have to look at alternative models of security-arrangements for the conduct of fair and peaceful polls across the country on a single day. With a massive strength of para-military forces ready for deployment, and with years available for advance planning, the possibility of relieving more of the former for poll duty, their places on the border and other troubled areas being taken up by military during the interregnum should be an alternative.
Oftentimes, security considerations and consequent preparations are cited as the reasons for the EC having to settle for multi-day polling. Yes, the services have justifiable reservations in deploying their men on what is essentially law & order duty, but securing democracy in specific instances and circumstances should not be seen as being out of sync with the normal duties of our military and para-military troops.
Ending finger-pointing
It's not as if all finger-pointing on poll practices, or mal-practices, have to begin and end with the political class. There is an equal and possibly a more urgent need for the EC and the nation as a whole taking a closer look at the structuring and functioning of the Commission and its State-level officers in particular. It's the double-question of 'Mirror, mirror, on the wall…' for the 'physician to cure thyself', first.
Ever since poll reforms hit the nation's conscience in the Nineties, we have had Election Commissioners and Chief Election Commissioners (CEC), who have left a mark - as much negative as positive - on the management and conduct of our elections. Starting with the 'father of electoral reforms', T N Seshan, we have had at least two CECs who entered direct politics after demitting office. Another joined direct politics and the elected Government at the Centre as a minister. Yet another was under a cloud from start to finish.
While seniority among the existing Election Commissioners has come to stay in the choice of CEC, as has been with the Chief Justice of India, the random picking up of individuals from outside the Commission for appointment as EC leaves much to be desired. It is inconceivable that political administrators would not have 'applied their mind', as they often to, in choosing officials for occupying politically-sensitive positions as EC, CAG, CVC, etc.
In the long history of the Election Commission of India, possibly one, that too a woman, came to occupy the EC/CEC post from within the Election Commission services. All others, including T N Seshan, were picked up from other departments of the civil service, notably and noticeably the IAS cadre, and were 'imposed' on the Election Commission. This practice has to end, if a strong government at the Centre, on a future and possibly a distant date, were not to manipulate the best practices that have since been incorporated in the poll processes. A healthy precedent thus has to be set now itself on making the posts of EC/CEC, cadre-based promotions from within the existing election management system.
It is even more important to have 'independent' Chief Electoral Officers (CEC) at the State-level. With strong leaders with a tough exterior coming to occupy the chief minister's chair in most States, and with their kind of regional politics dictating the fate of poll-management down the line, little is being heard, understood or acknowledged about the institutional and at times institutionalised partisanship of some - mostly out of fear and apprehension of physical threat for self and/or family members - to make them 'fall in line'.
The state of the bureaucracy and the media in those cases not being any different, to assume that the CEC and his officers would be independent in those States, despite the improved national mood and perception about the conduct of elections, is to ask for the moon - that too, on a new moon day. In some cases, election after election under a reformed poll scheme have witnessed open accusations by Opposition parties that the ruling party was having a free run of electoral violations, including cash-distribution and transfer of 'biased' bureaucrats and police officers, while they were being penalised and publicised for even unintended and perceived wrong-doing.
It is thus becoming increasingly imperative that an independent CEC, selected and appointed through the constitutionally-protected EC, is appointed, elevated, maybe to the national commission in due course. Once the current dust on existing issues with our elections get settled, these internal issues pertaining to the internal dynamics of the EC would prop up out of nowhere. The nation should be prepared to acknowledge how they could all damage the firmament of our democratic scheme, if timely cure is not injected just when it is required - here and now!
(The writer is a Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter)
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