The CEC controversy: Don’t discredit your umpire

Constitutional and statutory bodies in India have similar work cultures. Based on my experience, I can say that too much has been made of divergent views expressed by members of the ECI. All constitutional authorities encourage officers at all levels to express their views freely and frankly.

Those who are protesting against the Election Commission of India (ECI)’s special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls forget an important rule we learnt in our school days. Never discredit your umpires and examiners, except when you have incontrovertible evidence. Without it, you will only end up being branded as a sore loser and losing all credibility.

Recent events will eventually bear this out. An Indian Express report of 23 September on the ongoing SIR made waves. It substantially strengthened the Opposition’s vicious attacks against the ECI when it suggested inter alia that this constitutional body was a divided house and that the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) himself—designed to be only first among equals—was arbitrarily over-ruling other Election Commissioners (ECs). During the last ten months alone, it pointed out, the ECI had seen sharp differences of opinion amongst its members on fourteen issues on how the special intensive revision (SIR) of voter lists should be carried out.

Two Election Commissioners (ECs), according to the article, objected to additional information being ascertained through a modified version of Form 6, ironically approved by the Supreme Court itself. This form makes each new voter declare whether he or his father or grandfather figured in the voter list of 2002, when the last SIR was carried out. Objections were also raised on the functioning of ECI-net, the computer software system that purportedly centralised the power to add or delete voters with the body’s DG (Systems) rather than leaving it to duly empowered local electoral registration officers. As a result, the latter could not temporarily add the names of 97 eligible persons in Goa to the voter rolls. Such disempowerment of local officers was later brought to the notice of the Cabinet Secretary, when in actual fact, the latter has no role to play in the functioning of the Commission. Later the Commission confirmed that this piece of information was totally incorrect.