Dial M for Murder (of Democracy)

 

During this entire election (Lok Sabha, 2024), I have been appalled by what the Election Commission of India has done and more so, by what it has not done. The incidents have got curiouser and curiouser.

This has been the longest electoral exercise in India ever, except for 1951-52 when it was held over four months and 68 phases. However, the situation and the process were different then. 314 constituencies elected one member using the first-past-the-post system and 86 constituencies elected two members, one from the general category and one from scheduled castes or scheduled tribes. One constituency elected three representatives. The majority of voting took place in early 1952, but Himachal Pradesh voted in 1951 as its weather is usually inclement in February and March. Plus, India was a young nation and the logistics were truly challenging.

Even now, in India, elections are a mammoth exercise. The electoral roll comprises around 96 crore voters who cast their votes in 12 lakh odd booths. The sanctioned strength of Police all-India is 20 lakhs plus and the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) have around 10 lakh personnel. Obviously, the elections cannot be held on one single day. However, was it really necessary to have seven phases spread over 44 long days? A back-of-the-envelope calculation indicates that it can be done with three dates spread over 15 days only. How? 

During elections, due to extensive deployment of forces in an area, regular Policing, border guarding and other stresses on the Police are much less so easily, 50 % of the above 30 lakhs personnel can be mobilised. Looks like a tall ask but, if forced to, a lot of flab in terms of personnel deployed for non-policing duties (I saw one retired officer having 50 CAPF personnel in his house) can be trimmed down. In the current elections, 3.4 lakh CAPF personnel have been mobilised. That can easily go up to 5 lakhs. 

Secondly, my experience is that the personnel at the booth cannot thwart a depredation. A few polling booths are combined into a circle/sector and a force is deployed for each circle/sector. This is the force which patrols the booths in its jurisdiction and is the real deployment that makes for the effectiveness of the election police arrangement. Rather than manning the sensitive and hyper-sensitive booths by CAPF instead of local police, these circles should be made smaller and manned properly. That will reduce the absolute numbers and make for better policing. 

Half the CAPF personnel may be deployed each for Phase I and Phase II, a week apart. Bulk of the CAPF deployment in the Phase I may be relocated for Phase III and will get 10 days for movement and acclimatisation. 

Thus, the elections would be over in two weeks. 

When this is possible, why was the election spread over 44 days during the current elections? The reasons were not logistical. It was just to facilitate one particular “star campaigner” of one particular party to go around the countryside and campaign as much as possible. Unfortunately, it seems to have backfired. Badly. So, ‘Viksit Bharat’ immediately gave way to many things starting with M – Mutton, Machhli (Udhampur, April 12), Musalmaan (Ajmer, April 6), Mangalsutra (Banswara, April 21), Muslim Cricket team (Dhar, May 7), Mujra (Patliputra, May 25) and towards the very end, Mahatma, the unknown (TV interview, May 29). The whole thing was rounded off with a bout of Meditation with or without spectacles but definitely with the cameramen. 

For good measure, there were a few non-M words also, Ghuspetiya (Banswara, April 21), Vote jihad (Barasat, May 28), Reservation to Muslims at the cost of SC, ST, OBC (Dumka, May 28), the “Non-biological Divinity” (Varanasi, May 14), and so on. 

Section I (1) of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) requires that “No party or candidate shall include in any activity which may aggravate existing differences or create mutual hatred or cause tension between different castes and communities, religious or linguistic." 

Section I (3) of the Model Code of Conduct states, “There shall be no appeal to caste or communal feelings for securing votes …” Would the M-tirades be violations of MCC? Of course, they were, apart from falling foul of various sections of the Representation of People’s Act and IPC. The Election Commission of India (ECI) was silent. It remained silent when the voters were told that not voting for a particular party would be a “sin” as opposed to voting for it which would be “auspicious.” It also remained silent when campaign interviews were telecast in areas in “silent period” before polling. The so-called meditation which was nothing but a campaign ploy was telecast all over during the silent period before the last Phase poll on June 1. 

Then there were the prodigious amounts of lies and untruths purveyed with contemptuous glee. 

“They will put Ram Lalla back in a tent...,” “They will put a Babri lock on the Ram temple...,” “They plan to bulldoze Ram temple...,” “As per their manifesto, 15 % of the budget/ resources will be given away to ghuspetiyas…,” “If you have two buffalos, their government will take away one,” “No one knew about Mahatma Gandhi until a film was made about him…” It’s another matter that no such words were available in any manifesto and around 12,600,000 books on Gandhi are available in the US Library of Congress collection. Tempos loaded with cash of Ambani and Adani were never found. 

MCC does have prohibition against lies. Section I (2) directs, “Criticism of other parties or their workers based on unverified allegations or distortion shall be avoided.” 

Experiments with weaponised lies aren’t supposed to succeed with such ease, even if they come dressed in supreme arrogance. 

Unless future Election Commissions dig even lower, the current elections will probably go down in history as the rock bottom in terms of transparency, probity and fairness, with obvious implications for its presiding deities.