(Dr Parakala Prabhakar)
There was a time when people’s trust in the Election Commission of India (ECI) was higher than their trust in the judiciary. In his address on the occasion of ECI’s Golden Jubilee in 2001, the then President K R Narayanan cited the finding of an opinion poll and said: “… people rated the Election Commission very high, far ahead of … even the judiciary”.
Today, that trust is eroding. Recent survey conducted in six states by Lok Niti-CSDS found “a consistent decline in high trust in the EC across all six states and a corresponding increase in the numbers of those who do not trust the EC.” In Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, people who do not trust the ECI went up from 11% in 2019 to 31% and 30% respectively, now. In Kerala the increase is from 10% to 24%; in Madhya Pradesh, it rose from 6% to 22%. Overall, 21.7% of the survey’s respondents said the EC is working “completely” under pressure from the government; 31.7% said it is “somewhat” under pressure. Those who said that EC is “not at all” under pressure are only 11.6%. The ECI’s crisis of credibility is now deep.
Loss of credibility is well-earned by the ECI: both by its own conduct as well as by the way it has now come to be constituted. The selection committee that picks Election Commissioners (ECs) and the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) now has government majority of two to one. This rendered the appointment of ECs and the CEC akin to any other routine bureaucratic appointment by the government.
But that need not necessarily render them partisans of the ruling party. We must not overlook that TN Seshan was also appointed by the then government. But his conduct in office was exemplarily independent. He fiercely asserted the Commission’s autonomy. The conduct of the present ECs and the CEC is in stark contrast to that.
During the run up to the 2024 General Elections, the ECI has not applied the Model Code of Conduct to the Prime Minister and the ruling party’s lead campaigners. The Prime Minister could deliver as many as 110 hate speeches unchecked. The phasing of poll schedule defies logic. It is open to suspicions that it was decided to give advantage to the ruling party at the centre. Consider the illogic in the following: Andhra Pradesh which has 25 seats went to polls in a single phase. But Odisha which has only 21 seats voted in four phases. Tamil Nadu which has 39 seats voted in one phase. But Bihar which has only one seat more than it had a seven-phase polling.
The ECI has no credible explanation for the inordinate delay in announcing the final polling figures. It took 11 days to announce the final polling tally for the first phase polling. For the 2nd,3rd, 4th,5th,6th, and 7th phases, the delay was 4,4,4,3,3,5 days respectively.
ECI’s claims of logistic and connectivity challenges and exhaustion of polling personnel are unconvincing. The example of Chandigarh, a small Lok Sabha constituency of 15 kilometres radius, with first rate connectivity, having as few as 614 polling booths with only a turnout of 4,48,547 voters discredits ECI’s excuses. The poll body took 5 days to announce the constituency’s final voter turnout. The discrepancy between the provisional and the final voting figures there is 5.18%. What logistical and other challenges the ECI faced there remains a mystery.
Full details of the 2nd phase polling are still not available, more than a year after the elections. The ECI has not yet given the state-wise and constituency-wise provisional polling data for the phase. We only have the final polling data. One cannot, therefore, know what the discrepancy between provisional figure and the final tally of polling for this phase in different states is.
There is, indeed, cause for deep suspicion about this phase because the strike rate of the ruling BJP/NDA was extraordinarily high in it. For example, out of the 8 seats that went to polls in Uttar Pradesh in this phase, all the 8 were won by BJP/NDA. The following are its strike rate figures for some other states that had seats which went to polls in phase 2: West Bengal 3 out of 3, Madhya Pradesh 6 out of 6, Chhattisgarh 3 out of 3, Tripura 1 out of 1, J&K 1 out of 1, Karnataka 12 out of 14, Rajasthan 10 out of 13, and Assam 4 out of 5.
Is the high strike rate BJP/NDA in any way related to non-revelation of full poll data for this phase of the poll? The suspicion lingers.
Meticulous research by experts of the Vote for Democracy (VfD) group revealed that there is an unusually high discrepancy between the provisional polling figures announced after the official closing time of voting and the final polling figures notified by the ECI after a delay of several days. The discrepancy amounted to around 5 crore votes – 4,65, 46, 885 to be precise.
This hike was as high as 12.54% in Andhra Pradesh (AP) and 12.48% in Odisha. In both the states, the BJP/NDA scored remarkably high: In AP, it won 21 out of 25 seats and in Odisha 20 out 21 seats. In sharp contrast, in Uttar Pradesh, in the five phases out of seven where the hike was well under 0.50%, its score was low. To illustrate, in phase 3, the discrepancy was 0.21% and it could win only 4 out of 10 seats. In phases 4,5,6, and 7 the discrepancy respectively was 0.34%, 0.23%, 0.01%, and 0.25%. The score of BJP/NDA in these phases respectively was 8 out of 13, 4 out of 14, 3 out of 14, and 7 out of 13. The overall tally of the BJP/NDA in the state came down from 64 in 2019 to 36 in 2024.
This shows that smaller the discrepancy between provisional and final voting figures, lower are the gains for BJP/NDA. And larger the discrepancy between provisional and final voting figures, higher are its gains. It is difficult to draw any other inference.
There is one more irregularity in the 2024 poll figures accessed from the ECI’s data that merits serious attention. Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), reported that there are discrepancies between votes polled and votes counted in 538 out of 542 constituencies that voted. Except in four seats (Amreli, Attingal, Lakshadweep, and Daman & Diu) in the remaining 538 seats there was a discrepancy between the votes recorded in the EVMs, and the votes counted as reported by the ECI. In 176 constituencies a total of 35,093 more votes were counted. In 362 constituencies 5,54,598 less votes were counted. A total discrepancy of 5,89,691 votes was detected in 538 constituencies. The ECI has no explanation for this gross irregularity.
Then there is another worrying irregularity: the last phase of polling was held on 1 June 2024. Counting was held and results were declared on 4 June 2024. But the final poll data of the 7th phase of polling was announced by the ECI on the 6 June 2024 – two days after the results were declared. In other words, two full days after declaring the results, ECI tells the country how many votes were actually cast in the last phase. If the ECI thinks that it does not matter that polling numbers were declared after the results were announced, it should clarify why the country should not worry about it.
2024 ECI data presents yet another mystery. Final voting figures are available state-wise as well as constituency-wise for all the phases of polling. However, constituency-wise provisional polling data is not available for any phase of the polling. Even in this mystery, Phase 2 has an additional distinction: for this phase both the constituency-wise and state-wise preliminary polling figures are not revealed by the ECI, even as of today. We are yet to learn about how the ECI would justify this.
All these anomalies inexorably lead to one inference: the Mandate of 2024 is questionable. The data from the VfD report shows that a hike of nearly 5 crore votes could have led to a minimum of 79 seats across 15 states change hands. If these irregularities had not taken place, the ruling BJP/NDA in all likelihood could have been limited to 214 seats and opposition alliance might have had a tally of 303 seats.
There is a reason for the present BJP led NDA to reduce the ECI to a government department-like entity and make its functioning unaccountable and its practices opaque.
The Indian electorate historically has never given a mandate to a majoritarian, divisive agenda. When the former avatar of BJP, the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, went to polls on a Hindu majoritarian plank, its best ever popular vote share never even touched 10%. Only when it put aside its majoritarian agenda, its successor, the BJP, could increase its popular vote and manage to reach 25% vote share and attract allies to stitch a coalition capable of forming government. For a long time, however, the party had to battle taunts of ‘hidden’ agenda, and it had to repeatedly declare its faith in India’s secular creed. To be acceptable, it often had to say that it too was secular – ‘genuinely’ secular, but secular, nonetheless.
It is important to recall that the 2014 and 2019 campaign pitches of BJP-led NDA were not majoritarian. They emphasized development, removal of poverty, fighting corruption, bringing back black money stashed abroad, creating jobs, national security, ending policy paralysis, etc. In the run up to the 2014 general election the PM candidate Narendra Modi declared that the fight was not between Hindus and Muslims but it was between Hindus and Muslims on the one side, and poverty and unemployment on the other.
However, unlike the previous pitches, in 2024 the BJP’s pitch was unabashedly communal, divisive, majoritarian. Its agenda to turn India into a Hindu Rashtra and recast the Republic into a ‘civilisational state’ came to the fore. Broad hints were dropped that a new constitution would be brought in. Consecration of Ayodhya Ram Temple, Abolition of Article 370, decisive moves towards Uniform Civil Code too were major themes in the campaign. The PM’s rhetoric prominently featured dog whistles.
When sparsely attended rallies made it apparent that the electorate was hostile to the communal and divisive pitch, the BJP/NDA had no option but to resort to election manipulation to retain power. The delay of 11 days in announcing the final voting figures for phase 1 polling and the non-revelation of the provisional data of phase 2 polling can only be seen in this light. Similarly, the delay of 3 to 5 days in announcing the final polling figures for the remaining phases of polling. With a robust digital communications network in the country even a day’s delay in making the final data public is unjustifiable.
If doubts are cast over the sanctity of 2024 mandate, the responsibility for it rests entirely on the ECI. The Commission has become unaccountable and inaccessible. It stonewalls RTI queries. It does not meet, nor it responds to the memorandums submitted by civic groups. It does not speak to the media, and when it does, makes grotesque remarks such as machine-readable voter list would be doctored. It invokes privacy concerns to withhold and destroy video recordings of the poll process. It says it does not have the names and contact numbers of Returning Officers. It collaborates with the government to amend Rule 93(2)(a) of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961 to deny access to many critical poll records to citizens. The ECI makes Form 17C Part-I unavailable in the public domain for anyone to verify exactly how many votes were cast in each booth in the country.
While the nation’s attention is focussed on the ‘voter cleansing’ (a la ethnic cleansing) that is happening in the name of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar, it is important not to lose sight of the ECI’s gross irregularities that render the Lok Sabha 2024 mandate questionable.
If questions are not raised and the ECI is not compelled to be transparent and accountable, future elections in the country will become even more farcical. If 5 crores vote hike in 2024 polls is not called out, the next election might see a 10 crore vote hike and the one after that might even have a 20 crore vote hike. The danger of India turning into a notional democracy is real.
(Parakala Prabhakar is a political economist and author of The Crooked Timber of New India.)
COURTESY: FRONTLINE