BJP won but Election Commission lost

The Election Commission (EC) this year courted controversy from the word go, in fact from the moment it announced the long drawn out poll schedule that defied reason. The opposition complained that it was designed to help the BJP and its star campaigner, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. How else would you justify the complex plan that resembled a jigsaw puzzle, they argued.

Delayed action and clean chits given to the Prime Minister and BJP leaders made a dent into the EC’s credibility. It then compounded matters by taking the unprecedented step of stopping the campaign in the entire state of West Bengal for mob violence involving brick-batting on a stretch of half a kilometre on College Street in Kolkata.

It did nothing when people dressed as Ram and Hanuman took part in roadshows of political leaders. It had no control over the extraordinary sums of money spent by political parties in the election. The State Bank of India sold Electoral Bonds worth Rs 5000 crore and while the EC had objected to the opaque system of political funding, it did not oppose it strongly enough in the Supreme Court which refused to stay its operation. Some of the more controversial decisions taken during the election are the following

Baiting Bengal:

Black flags were shown to BJP president Amit Shah in Kolkata when his roadshow was on. A clash between BJP and Trinamool supporters followed and vandals broke into the Vidyasagar College on College Street and broke the bust of Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, a prominent figure of Bengal Renaissance who died 128 years ago.

The EC, faced with charges and counter charges, reacted somewhat curiously. While it had ignored violence on a bigger scale in earlier phases, this time it stopped the campaign in not just the city but in the entire state.

It also ordered the transfer of ADG (CID) Rajeev Kumar for ostensibly leading a police team to arrest some BJP activists staying in a hotel. It ordered the transfer of the state’s home secretary Atri Bhattacharya , who had written a letter to the EC, asking it to reconsider its direction to central paramilitary forces in the state to be left alone, unaccompanied by state police.

Bhattacharya, in his letter to the West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer, had written, “The CAPF are deployed as reinforcement and extra resources in the joint effort for conducting free and fair elections. They need to have with them local officers who know the locality and the situation and can communicate with voters whose democratic rights are to be protected. I would, therefore, request that the decision for not having a local officer in charge of Quick Response Teams be re-examined.”

A former CEC on condition of anonymity felt that the situation could have been dealt with in “many different ways” instead of resorting to cutting short the campaigning period.

“This (decision) can certainly be subjected to legal scrutiny even though the Commission under Article 324 of the Constitution is empowered to take any action in the larger public interest. However, I would still say the situation could have been handled in many different ways,” he told National Herald.

“It was not the first time that violence was taking place during an election. If law and order situation was really bad, the Commission should have countermanded the election.”

“Besides, under the Representation of Peoples Act, 1951, a minimum of 14 days have to be allowed to the candidates/parties for campaigning. If the EC’s decision curtailed the 14 days period, it is a violation of R.P. Act,” he added.

A suspension that raised eyebrows:

IAS officer Mohammed Mohsin was suspended by the EC for checking PM Narendra Modi’s helicopter in Odisha’s Sambalpur on April 16. The EC said that the officer had jumped his mandate and violated the EC’s direction regarding SPG protectees. The checking was done after it was reported that some heavy boxes had been offloaded from the PM’s chopper in Karnataka and taken away in a car that was not officially part of the PM’s cavalcade.

The EC faced an embarrassment when the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) revoked Mohsin’s suspension and stated in its order that an SPG protectee cannot be above the electioneering rules that apply to others.

“During an election process, while reasonable assurances of protection and security must be made available to SPG protectees, it cannot be said that they are eligible for anything and everything. There was news report indicating that heavy packages were taken away from the PM’s cavalcade into another vehicle, which sped away in another vehicle in Karnataka. Questions were raised about it but no action followed,” the CAT order read.

Not so clean chits:

A series of clean chits by the poll panel to PM Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah aroused reactions that varied from annoyance to amusement. Despite the EC’s clear guidelines to not invoke during the campaign any reference to the armed forces or any operations, overt or covert, done by them, BJP leaders including Modi repeatedly made references to the Pulwama terror attack and air strikes in Pakistan’s Balakot in their speeches. Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari even went to the extent of donning army fatigues and asking for votes in the name of the “martyrs”, without attracting any serious admonition from the poll panel.

Referring to Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s decision to also contest from Wayanad seat in Kerala, Modi at a rally at in Wardha, Maharashtra on April 1 had said the Congress was “running away from majority-dominated areas” to “take refuge in areas where the majority is in minority”. He also said the Congress tried to label Hindus as terrorists and that the party would be punished by Hindus for it. Modi repeated the majorityminority remarks at a rally in Maharashtra’s Nanded district.

On April 9, in a speech at Chitradurga in Karnataka, Modi asked new voters to dedicate their vote for the heroes of the Balakot air strike and to the martyrs of Pulwama. He made a similar appeal at a rally in Latur, Maharashtra later in the day.

The Congress also alleged that Modi held a “roadshow” after casting his vote in Ahmedabad on April 23, which violated the MCC. On the polling day, Modi was just an ordinary voter in his constituency, where campaign had ceased, the party pointed out in its complaint to the EC.

At a rally in Rajasthan’s Barmer, the PM threatened Pakistan saying India’s nuclear weapons were not meant “for Diwali”. This was the first time a political party and a PM had used national security and Pakistan as election issues.

But the EC ruled that the Prime Minister had not violated the MCC or any other rule including Sections 123 (3A) of the R.P Act that deals with promotion of “feelings of enmity or hatred between different classes of the citizens of India on grounds of religion, race, caste, community or language” by a candidate.

BJP president Amit Shah was also given clean chit by the Commission in two cases. Shah, during a speech in Nagpur, likened Wayanad to Pakistan. The poll panel, in a 2:1 ruling, absolved the BJP president of any wrongdoing. Notably, one of the three Election Commissioners - Ashok Lavasa - did not agree with the verdict.

The other case in which Shah was acquitted was his speech in West Bengal on April 22. While addressing a rally, Shah said that Modi had sent “his Air Force” to destroy terror camps in Pakistan after the Pulwama attack. The decisions in almost all the complaints of MCC violations came almost a month too late. Indeed, the Commission invited ridicule by issuing a warning to BJP candidate and Union Minister Giriraj Singh in Bihar for ‘hate speech’, 10 days after polling had taken place.