Vandita Mishra writes: The umpire in the spotlight

Indian Express

a day ago

Dear Express Reader,
The week of the 79th Independence Day ended with a press conference by the Election Commission of India that was both welcome and unsettling. On the face of it, the EC sought to address questions raised by the Special Intensive Revision exercise ahead of the election in Bihar — and even though Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar did not take Rahul Gandhi's name, on Gandhi's allegations of 'vote chori'.
That the EC sought to address questions swirling around it, when its conduct of the exercise in Bihar has raised serious apprehensions of large-scale disenfranchisement, was reassuring. But its tone and tenor has raised more questions.
Over an hour and a half, the CEC's main message was: The EC does not discriminate between parties and stands with 'the people'; in a vast and multi-layered electoral process, the onus is on those who raise objections about fake voters and compromised voter lists to follow the rulebook, laid out procedures and timelines for making such complaints; and if they do not do so, they must either make a declaration on oath or apologise to 'the people'.
There was something off-key about what the EC said and some conspicuous silences. To begin with, a constitutional body was insistently proclaiming its oneness with 'the people' while refusing to acknowledge the people's representative — the EC could have respectfully acknowledged the Leader of Opposition even as it countered his allegations and disagreed with him. More importantly, if it wanted to paint itself above the political fray, and as an institution that is procedurally even-handed, it should have addressed the fact that it has been put in the dock today not just by Rahul Gandhi's allegations, but also by the government.
Of course, Rahul Gandhi cast the first stone, with his allegations of manipulation of electoral rolls/turnout figures in Maharashtra and then with his charges of defective electoral rolls in Mahadevapura constituency in Karnataka. But subsequently, the ruling party, while taking aim at Rahul Gandhi, has also ended up (unintentionally) targeting the EC.
Listen in to another press conference, held on Wednesday, only a few days before the EC's meet-the-press on Sunday, and you will hear BJP's Anurag Thakur essentially repeating all of Rahul Gandhi's allegations — but with a communal tinge.
Like Gandhi, Thakur alleged the presence of fake voters, duplication of names, mass additions, doubtful addresses and dubious first-time voters in lists, and the misuse of government machinery. The difference was that Thakur picked constituencies won by Opposition leaders to make his case — including Wayanad, Diamond Harbour, Kannauj, Rae Bareli — and that he repeatedly drew attention to the names of the so-called doubtful voters, all Muslim.
In Thakur's list: Mohammad Kaif Khan, whose name allegedly appears in three lists in Rae Bareli, Khurshid Alam and Shabana Khatoon, whose name allegedly appears more than once in Diamond Harbour, Mahmoona in Wayanad, Sabri Begum, Shah Mohammad, Mohammad Shahbaz, Nisar Bano, Rafiullah … The list went on, and Thakur's chilling recitation left his audience in no doubt about what was remarkable and what was to be noted — the religion of the allegedly fraudulent voter in the lists. He connected the dots from the 'farji (fake) vote' to the Congress/Opposition's 'appeasement politics' that patronises the 'ghuspaithiya (infiltrator) vote bank', amid 'Islamic radicalisation' and threats posed by 'ek varg' (one section) to 'national security'.
If in Maharashtra and Karnataka, Rahul Gandhi made a political leap, not backed by evidence, from pointing out purported defects/inconsistencies in the electoral rolls/turnout figures to saying that the election result was manipulated by the BJP, Thakur was making a similar leap on the back of a dog whistle politics.
But what was common in the telling of both Gandhi and Thakur is the implication of the EC. After all, it is the poll monitor under whose watch the election was conducted, be it in Mahadevapura or Wayanad, Diamond Harbour or Rae Bareli, whether it was the Opposition that won or the BJP.
The EC did not show any awareness in Sunday's press conference that it is under attack now from more than the LoP it churlishly refused to name. It did not seem to recognise that it cannot just challenge Rahul Gandhi to sign an affidavit, take an oath, and leave it at that.
More fundamentally, the EC's refrain — show me the evidence, in the proper format, by a certain date, or else — shifts the onus of keeping the electoral rolls pure from itself to the people and political parties. Just as in the ongoing SIR in Bihar, the Commission shifted the responsibility of proving their innocence, or their citizenship, on the voters, by asking them to procure documents or be excluded, it is now saying that if anyone raises concerns about its exercise, it is they who must explain themselves, not the EC.
This has disquieting implications in a grim moment for India's democracy.
It is a time when wide and unsubstantiated allegations of 'vote chori' by the leader of the main Opposition party threaten to drown out the genuine and specific concerns about disenfranchisement sparked by the EC's exercise in Bihar. Rahul Gandhi's allegations have also raised a sombre question: Having raised the pitch so high, where does the Congress, and the Opposition, go from here? How do they dial back from a spiral into a politics of nihilism?
If they don't find a way back from the edge, what happens to the peaceful transition of power that India has always prided itself on, and which we have taken for granted? Does it pose a new challenge to the conduct of elections, their legitimacy?
And what happens if the result of the Bihar election is a close one?
It is a grim moment, also, because of the Modi government's response — first its attempt to speak for the EC, instead of letting it speak for itself, adding to doubts on the latter's fairness and independence. And then its subsequent misfiring at Rahul that has ended up wounding the EC.
But this is a sobering moment, most of all, because the EC, the constitutional authority with a hard-won autonomy, seems not to recognise the full scale of its own and the polity's predicament. Urgent repair work is needed by a credible and impartial umpire, there must be cross-party conversations on voters' lists and shared protocols, and the focus must be on voter inclusion, not voter exclusion, if a free fall is to be avoided into a political dead-end.
That's the challenge. So far, the EC has not stepped up to it.
Till next week,
Vandita