Election commission and Rahul Gandhi

The Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Mr. Rahul Gandhi, has alleged that there was rigging in the last Maharashtra Assembly elections. He has repeatedly raised this allegation, both inside Parliament and on the streets. On his complaint, the Election Commission has told him that he may personally come and meet the Commission and present his full complaint. The Commission will try to resolve his issue, but in the meantime, it has made it clear that elections in India are conducted entirely in a constitutional manner, according to rules, and that their sanctity and purity cannot be questioned.

However, Mr. Gandhi’s core allegation is that there was manipulation in the voter lists in the Maharashtra elections and that new voters were added unlawfully. Earlier, Gandhi had been saying that between the last Lok Sabha elections and the Assembly elections, so many new voters were added in Maharashtra that they exceeded the number added in the previous five years combined. The gap between the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections was only five months. Therefore, within those five months, more new voters appeared than had in the past five years. In this regard, Mr. Gandhi has also cited different voter figures from time to time. But the real issue is not the voter numbers, rather the sanctity of the election system itself, which is under attack from Mr. Rahul Gandhi, raising a serious question for India’s electoral process.

Earlier too, the Opposition has raised several questions about elections being conducted through EVMs, especially the Congress party. The party’s national president, Mr. Mallikarjun Kharge, even announced last year that his party would formally run a campaign for elections to once again be held through ballot papers. But on this issue, the Opposition does not appear united, and there is no consistency in this demand. In states where elections take place and the Opposition wins, this demand is sidelined, while in states where it loses, the blame is placed on the EVMs. Such an attitude cannot in any way be called justified.

The effort of the Election Commission is indeed worthy of appreciation. Because even the architect of the Constitution, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, attached great importance to the preparation of the voter lists. He said that the entire structure of the Election Commission stands upon the voter list. If the very foundation stone of this structure is laid incorrectly, then the whole electoral system will come under suspicion. Dr. Ambedkar envisioned the four-pillar democracy of India in which the Election Commission was such a foundational pillar that provided the ground for the other three pillars—legislature, executive, and judiciary—to stand upon. If doubts about impurity spread at the level of elections themselves, then the sanctity of the entire democracy will be endangered. That is why the Constitution granted the Election Commission a neutral, independent, and autonomous role, authorizing it to derive its powers directly from the Constitution, to function with complete efficiency, independence, and impartiality, and to remain directly accountable to the common voter of India.