The three election commissioners, responsible for electoral machinery, are men of straw, not responsible to the people, especially the political parties other than the ruling RSS Pariwar, to address their grievances notwithstanding the principle of accountability to the people. In the scheme of the Constitution of India and the rule of law-based system of democratic governance thereunder, all wings of the state organs, executive, legislature and judiciary are accountable. Media too is accountable and forms part as the fourth estate in terms of the Constitution and as enumerated and expanded by the Supreme Court of India. In the current scenario, the ECI has failed to be accountable to the people. People have come to doubt the ECI’s efficacy to conduct free and fair elections.

ECI failed to allow level playing field for all political parties equally and alike. The ruling RSS Pariwar amassed disproportionately and unprecedently huge amount of money under the veneer of law incorporated as electoral bond in the Finance Act, 2017, operational since 2018. The RSS Pariwar union government used both foul and coercive means to garner such a large amount of money. For this, RSS Pariwar government tinkered with the Income-Tax Act, the Companies Act and other laws and rules. It misused law enforcement and investigative agencies with impunity as coercive tools to garner huge money from corporate and companies, largely on losses. One wonders how loss-making companies paid large amount and whose money it is, after all, is a matter of investigation under the supervision of the apex court. Electoral bond is considered as the biggest corruption scandal of the republican India, now struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of India. The ECI after initial objection to the electoral bond maintained stoic silence quietly supporting the government, thus failing to stand up to safeguard democracy. It timidly discarded its primary role to allow level playing field for all political parties equally and alike.

In the electoral rolls, there are a large-scale deletions or willful omissions of voters of the minorities, Dalit, tribal, women and other weaker sections. There is noticeable failure of ECI to intervene timely to rectify the wrongs in voters’ lists. In addition, a large-scale deletions/omissions in voter’s identity cards have been noticed since 2014. Such ominously partisan conduct of ECI is perceptively as also covertly helpful to the ruling RSS Pariwar. Such things used to happen earlier as well. But it was always on low scale and the ECI used to take timely action. Added to this, ECI has been showing its reluctance to intercept, check and enforce with iron hands its Model Code of Conduct (MCC) to ensure free and fair elections. Prime Minister and other ruling RSS Pariwar members are violating MCC with impunity by invoking religion, divisive politics, communalism etc. in their canvassing and campaigning speeches and the ECI is maintaining worrisome silence. There is no way ECI can take action to stop willful violations of MCC. ECI has been serving notices to the opposition parties only. ECI just serves such notices to some ruling RSS Pariwar leaders of lesser significance just to maintain the semblance of formality that it (ECI) did not even spare ruling Pariwar members to maintain so called level playing field. ECI’s real test of fairness could be seen to be believed when it takes similar action against the PM and other big guns of the ruling clan. Earlier, the ECI had prosecuted then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi for her invocation of religion while campaigning for Goa state legislature polls. Same action was taken against the founder of Shiv Sena Party Bala Sahib Thackeray for his invocation of religion (Hindutva). As a consequence, Bala Sahib Thackeray was disfranchised by the ECI, duly endorsed by the then Law Minister Ram Jethmalani. Such was the prowess of the then ECI in exercise of its power to ensure and enforce MCC. Law Ministry is responsible for appointments of manpower including election commissioners and for public accountability of the ECI in Parliament.

As for the EVM (Electoral Voting Machine) it is long settled fact that no technology is absolute. Any computing device/electronic device including computers in high security banking and finance, super computing devices in the defence and security segments are not safe; they are subject to hacking or fishing by unscrupulous cyber crooks. What raises public doubts is four directors of RSS Pariwar on the Board of Directors out of seven directors on the Board of Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), a Central Government public enterprise, that manufactures EVMs. The union government can covertly manipulate it. Besides, in our system of governance people are sovereign masters of the government they elect. In this context, there is noticeable failure of the government and ECI to dispel the doubts of the people that there is something fishy which the government and ECI are not addressing. If the EVM could be that efficient and foolproof system for fair polling and results, it would have been used by all developed nations. The fact is the country that innovated EVM is not using it for their periodic elections. So the people’s apprehensions about the efficacy and fairness of elections through EVMs persist. The fear of covert manipulation of EVMs by the government and ECI combined to the advantages of the ruling conglomerate cannot be ruled out notwithstanding any disclaimer by the ECI.

Article 324 of the Constitution of India confers on the ECI unbridled reservoir of absolute power to exercise direction, superintendence and control of election machinery in order to ensure free and fair elections. ECI should not be conducting free and fair elections in terms of the impugned provisions of this Article read with the Representation of People Act and the MCC but be seen and believed to be so conducting the voting. The Supreme Court of India in several elections related judgments has pointed this out. Whether the ECI comes out unscathed on the touch stone of free and fair conduct of elections is for the people to see and take corrective action in keeping with the well settled democratic jurisprudence that no one is above the law in our system of governance!