Page 2 of 2 Unholy row in India's election commission
Santwana Bhattacharya
Election Commission, the man - who is distinguished among other things by a red
vermilion caste-mark on his forehead, a rare display these days of Brahmin
conservatism - was the hand-picked home secretary of former deputy PM-cum-Home
Minister LK Advani, the 'Iron Man' of the right-wing BJP.
It is for this reason that the Congress has found it possible now to allege "a
deep congruence" between Gopalaswami's actions and the BJP's designs. Even
respected constitutional experts like Fali S Nariman and former law minister
Shanti Bhushan find the timing of the CEC report suspect and political in
nature. Bhushan even demanded Gopalaswami's resignation for dragging the
commission and the President's office into this controversy on
election-eve. The BJP, on its part, is insisting that Chawla's continuation
itself is untenable, leave alone his proposed elevation. It is even considering
moving the Supreme Court on this.
As the temperatures go up, the political spectrum is also genuinely stricken by
the prospect of a constitutional impasse. In the midst of all this, the third
man on the commission, SY Quraishi, broke all protocol and jumped the gun to
announce a tentative timeframe for the Indian general elections from faraway
London. Under the circumstances, it could hardly be written off as a random
indiscretion - and created the impression of a triangular split. Remember, this
is harvest season at the commission: its daily work would include fixing the
timetable for polls that would decide who rules India for the next five years.
How would three warring commissioners actually work together? At an all-party
meeting called by the EC two days ago, a few delegates openly expressed their
doubts.
But will the Congress brazen it out once more, allowing someone clearly
perceived as a loyalist to rise to high office? Its response could evolve:
though only one commissioner is retiring in April, a senior central minister
told this correspondent about "two fresh appointments" being on the cards,
which could mean either a scripted resignation drama or even an expansion. For
the record, however, law minister HR Bharadwaj did some tough talking through
the media, asking Gopalaswami not to exceed his mandate or play "political
boss''. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is recuperating from a cardiac
surgery, may not want to be seen on the side of constitutional impropriety, but
the party seems to be sticking to its guns. That is, the succession can go on
as scheduled; and the CEC's recommendation does not bind anyone to any course
of action because the incumbent has no suo motu powers.
This moral/legal unease with the phrase suo motu, indeed, has a history
that explains exactly why the Election Commission has the prestige and aura
that it has in India. It goes back about two decades to the time it used to be
a one-man commission. To the seminal but disturbing figure of TN Seshan, the
10th Chief Election Commissioner. A typical mandarin who rose to the very top
of Indian officialdom in the 1980s doing nothing more than the servile bidding
that his ilk was known for, he suddenly discovered a spine after being named
the CEC. The results were nothing short of electrifying.
Those days, elections in India offered a spectacular theatre of democratic
malpractice. Alcohol and money would flow in urban shanties in return for
votes. And rigging in the vast rural swathes usually went beyond sophisticated
sleights of hand accomplished through paperwork. With the tacit knowledge of
all party bosses, political goon squads would roam the countryside and simply
"capture" entire polling booths or shepherd entire villages by the truckload to
vote at gunpoint. Violent clashes and killings were almost normal. Popular
disenchantment with "corrupt" politicians was at an all-time high. In short,
conditions were ripe for a saviour.
Enter 'Al-Seshan'
In walked Seshan, rulebook in tow, turning a position that was nothing more
than a sinecure until then into the Holy Office of the Inquisition. He
unilaterally ordered wall-to-wall army deployment in constituencies with a nose
for trouble, countermanded elections if there was even a whiff of wrongdoing,
and cracked down on parties that ignored the model code of conduct.
In short, he single-handedly took on the entire political class and, to those
who questioned, all he did was refer them to the lawbook. He was an excellent
scholar, and it turned out that for every sceptic he could quote a
constitutional clause that protected his capacity to act. Thus, the Indian
citizen began to see in him a personification of the rule of law; he had tapped
into a latent desire for order.
Then hubris struck. Seshan's profile inevitably went through a sort of
hyper-inflation, hasty biographies were written, and his actions started taking
on a distinct dictatorial air, guided by his own vaulting ambition. After his
term ended, his visions of presidential grandeur came a cropper in a disastrous
bid for the country's highest office, backed, ironically, only by the extreme
right-wing Shiv Sena.
But he had accomplished two things: scared witless by his runaway
unilateralism, a nervous government in 1993 managed to convert the commission
into a three-man panel, with the CEC merely the primus inter pares. Ever
since, the precise degree to which the CEC has suzerainty over their two
colleagues is a matter of high disputation - coming right down to the present
fracas over suo motu powers.
He had also managed to convert the EC into quite the showpiece of Indian
democracy, exporting its expertise to such nations as Afghanistan. In testing
the boundaries of personal initiative in a judicial role, in exceeding and
faltering, he ironically created the space for action that it now inhabits. He
set off a bit of a trend, a me-too phenomenon of activist-bureaucrats even
outside, behaving like sheriffs riding into a bad town, shooting straight from
the lawbook. And in the EC, any number of dowdy bureaucrats who came in his
wake have walked with an extra swagger and with the conviction that they sit on
a huge deposit of popular trust.
In a political world awash in wavering certitudes, they still play to the
perceptions of being objective umpires who refuse to kow-tow to a manipulative,
self-serving political class. This aura the institution carries has been
burnished anew ever so often, and frequently in very trying circumstances. Its
visible neutrality also helps stabilize the polity.
The current controversy broke just days after the commission successfully
conducted elections in Kashmir, where a record turnout of voters not only
stunned domestic doomsayers and the international community but even shocked
Kashmiri separatist leaders. Its regulatory presence and jurisprudence has also
helped India manage the transition from being a single-party democracy for much
of its 60 years to a multi-party coalition era where small regional parties
with limited elected representatives call the shots. It's an increasingly
fragmented polity, where two main national parties - the Congress and the BJP -
have to depend on regional outfits to form a government or to play an effective
opposition, and a non-partisan umpire provides a level playing ground.
It is this role of a neutral adjudicator that the present crop of commissioners
must live up to. And the political class too would do well to realize the
utility of a robust, autonomous institution goes well beyond the next election.
To start with, everyone could mull over the suggestion put forward by TS
Krishnamurthy, the former CEC, and the EC's ex-legal counsel KJ Rao, that the
appointment of election commissioners be delinked from the executive. For it is
clearly the political appointments, done by the government of the day, that has
led to such unsavory episodes.
Santwana Bhattacharya is a New Delhi-based journalist who writes on
politics, parliament and elections. She currently working on a book on
electoral reforms and the emergence of regional parties in India.
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