Defending the Indefensible

The Modi government’s response to the ongoing protests against the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls, and to the growing demand for the resignation of the controversial Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, is baffling. By trying to protect its own interests over those of the Election Commission of India, the government has landed itself in the dock. It is now seen as defending what cannot be defended. The controversy surrounding the CEC is not imagined. It is real, and the facts speak for themselves. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral roll is as controversial as the manner in which the CEC has been using it to disenfranchise around 13 crore voters. That is not a technical hiccup. It is a number large enough to alter the outcome of elections, and with it the character of Indian democracy itself. The government’s argument, placed in context, is that electoral rolls must be clean and free of bogus entries. No serious citizen disputes the need for accuracy; a faulty roll is a faulty mandate. But the demand for clean rolls cannot become a licence for opaque deletion. Verifying a roll is administration; mass deletion without explanation is disenfranchisement, and the two must never be confused. When lakhs and crores of names disappear from the rolls, the burden of proof rests on those who ordered the exercise, not on those who lost their vote. Transparency is not an unreasonable expectation. It is the minimum condition of a credible election. What has followed is equally troubling. Protests that are democratic in nature should not be confronted with brutal police force and aggressive arrests of protestors, including opposition leaders. The protestors are not criminals, nor are they anti-national elements. All they want is justice, which the ECI appears unwilling to provide. The government should restrain itself from undertaking offensive actions where there is no warrant for such action. The protests against the SIR and the CEC are not about politics. They are about the manner in which elections are now being fought -through the deletion of lakhs and crores of names. There has to be transparency, and that is all that the opposition and the CJP are demanding. If demanding transparency and accountability is treated as a crime and as anti-constitutional, then it must be asked whether acts that are clearly against the principles of justice can be acceptable or legal. Here lies the real cost of the government’s stance. A commission that conducts elections is only as strong as the trust it commands, and that trust cannot be recovered by shielding it from scrutiny. Defending the ECI against legitimate questions does not strengthen the institution; it weakens it. It converts a constitutional body into a political shield, and in doing so invites exactly the suspicion it claims to reject. An election is a promise that every valid vote counts, and a promise broken at this scale cannot be repaired by any result, however legally certified. The opposition and the CJP have every right to protest, and this will continue. Hopefully, the Supreme Court will eventually intervene to bring some sense of justice into the system. Otherwise, India is headed for a very difficult period ahead.