It is something of a mystery what Seshan's minions do with this vast accumulation of detritus

Take, for instance, the simple matter of motor vehicles. Should Seshan, curling his lip, snarl, 'Yeah, what about cars?' your average candidate would be well advised to desist from producing his parole certificate and instead whip out the Model Code of Conduct. It contains not a word about cars! Now, is or is not the Code of Conduct the Ten Commandments ( and a bit more!) of Shri Moses Seshan? Indeed, let the candidate go a step further. Your Average Candidate might not have got beyond fifth class before he was rusticated but, based on his previous encounters with the law, he must have found himself a good lawyer.

If that lawyer were to go through all 500 pages of Nirvachan Sadan's compendium, he might find a great deal about official cars and ministers contesting elections -- but not a word about non-ministerial candidates and their cars. Nor about two-wheeler scooters, motorcycles, auto-rickshaws, power-driven bicycles, you name it.

Yet, it is these vehicles that are the stuff and substance of getting the electoral message across. What, with respect to vehicles, it permitted and what is not is not listed anywhere, merely thrown out at press conferences. Worse, thrown out at press conferences not by the articulate Messiah alone but by a whole army of mini-Messiahs spread across the length and breadth of our benighted land.

In my case, the collector of Thanjavur was reported in the papers as saying that a candidate would be permitted only seven vehicles. Consternation followed by clarification; clarification by consternation. It took all three weeks of the campaign to discover that the collector was referring only to the polling day itself.

Even then, no one -- least of all the collector -- could tell what was the legal sanction for the administrative order, whether it was the maha-Messiah of Nirvachan Sadan or the chhota-Messiah of the state election commission who was behind it, and what, above all, was meant by 'car'. Would, for instance, my wife driving off to Swamimalai to pray for the mandate the people were withholding constitute 'corrupt practice' if hers was the eighth car on the roads; and what proportion of petrol, oil and lubricants, not to mention wear-and-tear, should be attributed to my election account -- the whole journey or only that portion which fell within my constituency till she crossed over to the next in which Swamimalai lay?

In any case, the Election Commission wants vouchers, hundreds even thousands of vouchers, not just for petrol but staplers and rubber bands, photocopies and fax messages -- anything to swell the vaults of Nirvachan Sadan. It is something of a mystery as to what Seshan's minions do with this vast accumulation of detritus. For the law permits the Election Commission only to gather the garbage; the Election Commission is prevented by law from auditing the accounts.

The mounds of paper are dusted off and examined only if there is an electoral dispute. And although the law says every electoral dispute must be settled within six months and a by-election ordered immediately should the previously elected candidate be found guilty, only the most wizened chaprasi in Nirvachan Sadan is able to recall when the courts and the Election Commission actually disposed of a disputed election within the mandatory period.

The problem on the ground is that the overwhelming majority of party workers -- in every party, not just mine --- are not your typical nine-to-five types. Most are unemployed -- many unemployable. If they did not hold down a regular job, they would not be available for round-the-clock campaigning. I do not know how urban candidates manage; in rural constituencies like the one I used to represent, educated party workers are available only because agriculture is not a whole-year occupation. The result is that virtually no party worker is trained in the 'payments-against-vouchers' culture that comes so naturally to the babus of Nirvachan Sadan.

However much one begs the party worker to produce vouchers and fill in log-books, nine times out of ten he returns with the payment made but no voucher to show for it. That would not matter if Seshan were to allow me to confess to an expenditure without proving that it was actually incurred. Instead, how, asks Seshan, do I know you actually did not spend more? True. So, in the absence of vouchers, I am left with no alternative but to say it was not spent at all!

What really stumped me on the vouchers front was the very first expenditure item desired of me: the cost of my nomination form. Now, this presumably is standard throughout the country. Must each candidate fill the column individually? In any case, what am I to do when my agent tells me he got the nomination form for free? How can you have, I plead. But it was given to me free, he replies. I contact the returning officer. Yup, he confirms we did not charge for it. But the standard return says I must account for what I spent on the form.

If it was nil, why would Nirvachan Sadan want to know? A gleam enters my agent's eye. Put down any figure you like, quoth he, and I will rustle up a receipt to match the confession!