The Election Commission is conducting a thorough revision of voter lists in 12 states and union territories, including the deletion of millions of voters. Opposition parties are raising a hue and cry about this, but the Election Commission is responsible for purifying the lists. Constitutionally, it is its responsibility to ensure that only adult citizens of India are included in these lists, that no valid voter is left out, and that the names of newly registered voters are included in these lists. Therefore, no one should have any apprehensions about the preparation of voter lists, and the Election Commission should be allowed to carry out its work with complete honesty and integrity. Although this issue was openly discussed in the recently concluded winter session of Parliament in the name of electoral reforms, opposition parties could not prove that the Election Commission had any flaws in its intentions. While procedural flaws can certainly be cited, for example, under the immense pressure of the revision work, BLOs in several states even committed suicide, this does not prove that the Election Commission has any flaws in its intentions, as it is simply performing its constitutional mandate.
The Election Commission does not belong to any government, but rather to the nation of India, and it exercises its authority directly under the Constitution. The Constitution makes it directly accountable to the voters, but political parties also play a role in this process, as they play the largest role in India’s democracy, and through them, the public expresses their will in elections. This will is demonstrated through the exercise of the constitutional right to one vote. In India, the common people have gained this right after a long struggle. Generations of freedom fighters sacrificed their lives during the country’s independence struggle. Only after independence did the common people gain this right, and India became a republic. In a republican India, the people’s government is formed through the power of the vote. It is through the power of the vote that the people can even change the government in elections held every five years. This power was bequeathed to the people of India by the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, who declared in 1928 that in independent India, the right to vote would not be limited to a select few so-called elite citizens, but would be equally available to every adult citizen, without any distinction between high and low, gender, or gender. This right would be available to people of every caste, class, and community, without any religious discrimination, so that India would become a true republic and administrators would be born from the power of this vote. Therefore, to protect this right to vote, an independent Election Commission was established in independent India, maintaining its completely apolitical character and not becoming a part of the government.
Our Constitution’s framers entrusted the Commission with the responsibility of laying the groundwork for parliamentary democracy in a way that ensures equal participation for every Indian. This participation was ensured through the right to one vote, ensuring no difference in the value of an industrialist’s or a laborer’s vote, and that governments were formed from the state to the central level based on the principle of one person, one vote. India continues to operate on this principle established by its ancestors, and the people of this country express their political will every five years. This was termed political freedom and equality, but the responsibility of maintaining this equality was placed on the Election Commission. Therefore, the purification of voter lists is directly linked to the purification of democracy. If fake voters are found in the voter lists, it would be considered a weakness of the Election Commission. Therefore, it becomes its duty to delete the names of such voters and ensure that a voter can vote only once. Additionally, no voter should be registered in more than one place, and no vote should be cast in the name of a deceased person.
The Election Commission has released the second draft of the revised list for 12 states: Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Andaman and Nicobar Islands, in which a total of 36.8 million voters have been deleted. Although Andaman and Nicobar Islands is a small Union Territory with a total of 310,000 voters, it has the highest number of voters deleted, at 21 percent. This is because 16.72 percent of these voters have relocated, 2.56 percent have died, and 0.94 percent are registered in more than one place. If 21 percent of voters are found to be fraudulent during the Election Commission’s voter list purification process, how can we boast of electoral purity? Similarly, Madhya Pradesh had a total of 57.4 million voters, of which only 53.1 million were found to be valid. As for the southern state of Kerala, it had 27.8 million voters, but only 25.4 million were found to be valid. In Chhattisgarh, the number also dropped from 21.2 million to 18.4 million. Opposition parties question the decline in voter turnout, but they often neglect to mention the rate at which people migrate from various Indian states to other states and even countries in search of livelihood. All these factors should be taken into account when criticizing the Election Commission.
