'All Is Not Well With Election Commission'

'They refuse to be transparent. They refuse to be accountable.'

One of the most surprising election results of 2024 came from Maharashtra.

Nobody expected the ruling Mahayuti party to sweep the elections.

Not just the Opposition parties, many political commentators also have several unanswered questions regarding the way the election was conducted.

"How do we still call ourselves a democracy if the process by which you elect is compromised, and the commission which has to ensure the integrity of our electioneering and the election process itself is compromised?" well-known political economist and commentator Parakala Prabhakar asks Rediff.com's Shobha Warrier in the concluding segment of a two-part interview.

• Part 1 of the Interview: 'Conduct Of Elections Has Become Suspicious'

You feel transparency was lacking even when the discrepancy was pointed out?

Discrepancy was not soundly justified.

Secondly, if you want to justify the discrepancy, you have to show me the video of the booths where people waited and voted.

Another thing is, there is no booth that will have more than 1,500 people voted. It means 1,000 people were waiting after the poll hour closed. Does it mean that only 500 voted the entire day?

All these things raise suspicion.

I don't want to jump to conclusions. My point is that the Election Commission will have to come out and explain this, and prove its impartiality as there are doubts cast.

Opposition parties are also asking the Election Commission to explain. But there is total silence from the Election Commission...

Let me come to that. If the Election Commission thinks that election is a process to be sorted out between the Election Commission and political parties, I completely disagree with it.

Let the political parties question. Let the political parties not question. Let them all be on the same side. I don't care.

As a voter, as a citizen, I want to know how the Election Commission can justify the reasons for giving out figures in three different stages.

In this age of rapid communications, good connectivity and electronic voting where you are not manually counting votes, why do you have to wait till late at night to update the figure?

Are you suspicious of the alleged manipulation of the machines or the machinery that conducted the elections?

I do not want this to be a technical debate or the debate on technology like whether the machine is hackable or not.

I am not concerned about that part. I am only asking why you have this kind of a discrepancy.

Then, I am asking what is it that makes a delayed transmission of information from a constituency level or district level to the Election Commission.

Third, why do you have another figure before the counting?

I see the NDA-BJP doing badly when the hike was marginal, and the NDA-BJP doing very well when the hike was more. Examples: UP, Haryana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra.

This raises a lot of questions.

Can the Election Commission say, these are the logistical reasons why we are not able to promptly update?

Take, for example, Chandigarh during the Lok Sabha elections. It has a radius of about 17 kms. Can you imagine any other place which is more connected than Chandigarh? Why do you take 5 days to update Chandigarh's final figure?

Many Opposition parties are questioning the EVMs. A village in Maharashtra, dissatisfied with the result, wanted to conduct another election using paper ballots...

Okay, if the citizens want to do something like that, why the government imposed a curfew there? What are they afraid of?

These are the things that raise suspicion.

Opposition parties are questioning.. people like you are questioning.. But a new government has come, and it is business as usual for the ruling party.

If the civil society remains passive, anybody can do anything. That should not be the case.

How do we still call ourselves a democracy if the process by which you elect is compromised, and the commission which has to ensure the integrity of our electioneering and the election process itself is compromised?

The way it is appointed is compromised... The way it conducted itself is compromised.. The way it announces the figures is compromised... The way it justifies why there are so many announcements is compromised...

It all goes to show that all is not well with the Election Commission.

And they refuse to be transparent. They refuse to be accountable.

IMAGE: Parakala Prabhakar

So, for you it is not about whether we should have EVMs or paper ballots...? That's not the point...

That point comes later. Only when somebody finds out it is because of EVM that the discrepancies happened.

But today these are questions that need to be answered first. Then we can diagnose or try and see what caused this.

After that, we can reform the process.

First of all, let us understand why this happened. Then, we will see how it happened.

Should the election commission be answerable to citizens?

It should be. Any Constitutional body will have to be answerable, is not it so?

Who are they answerable to?

If the citizens or the people are not sovereign, I want to know who is sovereign in this country.

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com