Election Commission has allowed itself to be pushed into a zone of odium

Last Sunday, in his first Mann ki Baat programme of 2025, Prime Minister Narendra Modi alerted the country to the celebration of January 25 as National Voters’ Day. The Election Commission (EC) was established on that date.

Interestingly, Modi encouraged citizens to participate more actively in elections but he did not laud them for voting in larger numbers than before even in remote parts of the country, with women often outnumbering the men. This is widely viewed as a noteworthy aspect of our democracy.

What appears odd is that the Prime Minister praised the work of the EC instead.

Free and fair?

Many are likely to regard this with irony — even discomfiture — in the light of the controversial conduct of the polls by the poll panel in the Lok Sabha election of 2024 as well as the subsequent Assembly polls in Haryana and Maharashtra.

The sense appears widespread that the conduct of these elections did not clear the bar of being free and fair. Public scrutiny of various steps in the poll process in these elections is underway.

The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), an esteemed body whose well-recognised work is in the area of election transparency, has questioned the conduct of the last parliamentary election in its publication, Discrepancies Between the Votes Cast and the Votes Counted in the 2024 Lok Sabha Election — Multiple Perspectives.

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Constitution of EC

Indeed, the very existence of the presently constituted EC, owing to a change of law in November 2023 that excluded the Chief Justice of India (CJI) from the selection panel, is under judicial challenge in the Supreme Court.

This is because the CJI, who was earlier a member, was dropped and replaced by a Union minister, giving the Union government a majority in deciding on the Chief Election Commissioner and other EC members.

In this event, the poll body can no longer be deemed independent. This detracts from its credibility as an impartial umpire.

Electoral discrepancies

A pre-condition of the democratic system of governance is the existence of an election authority that is free from pulls and pressures from the government or any other source. CJI Sanjiv Khanna has recused himself from hearing the matter before the apex court as it concerns the office he holds.

In questioning the conduct of the last Lok Sabha election, the ADR — basing itself on votes cast through EVMs and reported by the EC — observes that in 362 parliamentary constituencies, 5,54,598 fewer votes were counted than were cast. In 176 constituencies, 35,093 more votes were counted than cast.

Thus, 538 of 543 Lok Sabha constituencies witnessed discrepancies.

The ADR has sought an enquiry. It found there was no reasonable explanation from the EC on the announcing of the results before the release of accurate final data. The poll body has offered the country no basis to dispel suspicion of wrongdoing.

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Dubious voting

Another civil society body — Vote for Democracy — gave out figures last July to suggest that in the Lok Sabha election held in May, 4.65 crore more votes were reflected in the final data compared to initial estimates of the EC.

This appears to be unconscionably high. According to Vote for Democracy's assessment, the impact of this on the results was felt in 79 Lok Sabha constituencies. There was much agitation in the media about this, but the EC maintained a stoic silence in response.

When the BJP tally dropped from 303 seats in the previous House to 240 in the present one, speculation was rife that the surprise increase in votes counted was the reason why it could attain even that level. And, many proposed that the party may have failed to form a government even as a coalition partner were it not for this unusual development.

Nullifying court order

Sharp questions were raised regarding irregularities in the Haryana Assembly election. The Congress sent a detailed note to the EC, which in turn rebuked the main opposition party for trying to raise a scare. The EC, however, said nothing of substance to quell the sharply articulated doubts which amount to ballot stuffing in the EVM age.

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When a petitioner, Delhi lawyer Mahmod Paracha, took the matter to the Punjab and Haryana High Court and the court directed the EC to share all documents relating to the Haryana election, including CCTV footage (permissible under Section 93 (2) of the Conduct of Election Rules), the Union government, on the EC's recommendation, proceeded to amend these rules to restrict public access to such documents.

Election fraud?

Thus, the high court direction has been reduced to a nullity. People are left with no basis to question the EC.

This has indeed left a trail of bitterness, not least because of the widespread impression that the victory by the slimmest of margins of the incumbent government of the BJP in Haryana was obtained through fraudulent means, with the EC looking the other way or being complicit.

Something similar is the grouse in the Maharashtra Assembly battle, in which the BJP and its allies romped home by an unprecedented margin when, four months earlier, they had been trounced in a humiliating fashion in the Lok Sabha poll by the same opponents. Large-scale irregularities are being suspected.

Explosive admission

This sense was reinforced recently with the EC acknowledging that it lacks information on the total number of constituency-wise and segment-wise pre-numbered slips issued during the Maharashtra Assembly and Parliament elections.

The admission came in response to an RTI request by Venkatesh Nayak, director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. “It is to inform you that information as sought by you is not available in the Commission,” wrote the EC.

This is explosive. Its upshot is that the votes permitted to be cast through the EVMs after the cut-off time of 6 pm were mostly bogus, as no record was kept, although this is a requirement under the EC's rules. Since no record was maintained, the surmise is natural that the bogus votes benefited the BJP-led combine.

If this had not been the case, the BJP-led coalition is likely to have lost the election.

EC bias for BJP

Since serious doubts have arisen as regards the Lok Sabha election and the Assembly polls in two states which had incumbent BJP governments, the implication is that action or inaction or complicity or laxity on the part of the EC has caused a shift to occur in the political balance of forces in the country in favour of the ruling party at the Centre, whose creatures the present members of the ECI happen to be. And in the process the people have been given short shrift, with their vote made to lose all meaning.

It does seem that election manipulation — and it is apt to be seen as such in light of EC’s marked reticence to take the voting public and their representatives into confidence — is seen to occur in states run by the BJP or in states where the BJP has an impressive presence even if it is not the ruling party or part of the ruling combine (as was the case with the Lok Sabha poll in Karnataka).

How to win while losing

The EC has thus allowed itself to be pushed — without the smallest show of reluctance, it would seem — into a zone of odium. In effect, it has become an instrument of state capture in the hands of the movers and shakers of the present dispensation.

Thus, they win even when they lose. For a democracy, that is malign benevolence.