Election Commission chooses to give Prime Minister Modi a long rope

The Clean chit given by the Election Commission to two of Prime Minister Modi’s election speeches at Wardha and Latur have shocked even neutral observers. The Commission has concluded that since the Prime Minister did not ‘directly’ appeal for votes on the ground of religion at Wardha, his speech was not violative of the Model Code of Conduct.

Even more shockingly, the Commission overruled the conclusion of its own officers in Maharashtra who concluded that the speech was inconsistent with the Model Code of Conduct. The Commissioners felt that officials had relied on just five sentences in the speech and not the speech in its entirety.

Has the Commission taken the speeches of opposition leaders too in their entirety before taking action and concluding that they violated the Model Code of Conduct ? Have more than five sentences from their speeches prompted the conclusion ?

A plain reading of the PM’s speech at Wardha would indicate that he accused the Congress of calling Hindus terrorists. This statement is provocative and mischievous, if not false. It certainly borders on incitement. The PM also said that Congress leaders were seeking shelter in places where the majority were in a minority. This statement can be seen as divisive. In a third sentence, the Prime Minister declared that Hindus would punish the Congress.

That the Commission has seen nothing wrong in these statements is a telling commentary on our times as well as on the Commission itself, the weakest, the most inconsistent and the least experienced in decades.

Combating money and muscle power was the challenge before the Election Commission at the turn of the century. It failed to curb either. Ensuring a level playing field was another challenge. It once again appears to have failed in its task.

The sitting Prime Minister declares at every other election speech that his party would be returning to power; that he would continue to be the Prime Minister; that he had asked bureaucrats to chalk out a blueprint for the first 100 days of his next term! To a citizen, the utterances may appear to border on intimidation. But clearly the Election Commission sees nothing wrong in this or the incumbent Prime Minister ordering bureaucrats to prepare a blueprint for the first 100 days of the next Government.

Once the election is announced and the Model Code of Conduct kicks in, the Prime Minister is no longer a Prime Minister in the eyes of the Election Commission or in the eyes of the voters. He is the leader of a political party contesting in the election, a candidate seeking votes. He, of course, is the caretaker Prime Minister and has to act as such. But by no stretch of imagination is he allowed to anticipate and predict the outcome of the election; or threaten and intimidate bureaucrats and behave like a Sultan, who can do no wrong.

Raids by Income Tax, by the Central Bureau of Investigation and by the Enforcement Directorate have continued before, during and after the polling in various states. Prime Minister Modi has declared righteously that even his house should be raided if the agencies found anything wrong. But the glaring fact that during the last five years, agencies have not raided a single BJP leader or politician tells a tale. The Prime Minister and the ruling party would have people believe that the richest political party, which is splurging money like water, has nothing to hide and is above board while the entire opposition comprise the corrupt.conclusions

The Prime Minister’s sense of entitlement is such that his campaign appears to be micro-managed by the PMO. The evidence surfaced in the form of an innocuous looking email sent to the District Collectors of all the places the PM was scheduled to visit for election rallies. Information of local importance—clearly with a view to incorporate them in the Prime Minister’s speeches—were elicited and collectors were directed to send them to the PMO.

Does this amount to a violation of the Model Code of Conduct? Does it amount to corrupt practices? The Election Commission itself ruled that the NITI Aayog Vice Chairman had violated the Code when he criticised NYAY, the minimum income guarantee scheme promised in the Congress manifesto. His explanation that he did so as an economist and in his personal capacity cut no ice and the Commission let him off with a warning. So, the lines may be thin but the lines are there.

But not even the most trenchant critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi can accuse him of being afraid of such lines. On the contrary, he revels in breaking rules and conventions---as one of his several loyalists in the media has argued saying that his mandate was not to reform but to disrupt. No Prime Minister before him has made so much use of public funds and Government machinery to campaign. No Prime Minister before him has so shamelessly turned every official function to an election meeting.

In the 42 days before the Model Code of Conduct kicked in, no Prime Minister before him has ever unveiled or laid the foundation stone of 150 projects in 37 cities and towns as Narendra Modi did between January 26 and March 8 this year.

Each function was utilised by him to deliver his election pitch and take potshots at the opposition. That the functions were organised with public money, that as PM he is not expected to behave like the Prime Minister of only those Indians who voted for him, are niceties that he is unaware of or is unwilling to heed. The foundation spree may not have violated the Model Code of Conduct but did destroy the level playing field, giving an undue advantage to the incumbent.

Curiously, the Election Commission itself claimed before the Supreme Court that it was helpless in enforcing the Model Code of Conduct. It had limited powers, the Commission argued, and could merely issue advisories and issue warnings.

It was only after an indignant Supreme Court demanded the presence of a senior enough official of the ECI in the court the next day that the Commission seemed to wake up and debarred Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, BSP leader Mayawati and Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan from campaigning for varying periods.

All of them were ‘punished’ for violating the MCC, for appealing to voters on religious grounds in trying to polarize them. But why then did the Commission ignore similar utterances by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah?

The full Commission comprising all the three members apparently meet twice a week during general elections to review violations of the model code. But instead of meeting eight times in the month of April, the full Commission apparently met only once, on the last day of April---to give a clean chit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election speech at Wardha on April 1 (see Box).

How is the Prime Minister’s speech at Wardha different from Mayawati’s at Deoband ? If the BSP leader was guilty of asking voters of a particular faith to vote or not vote for a party, wasn’t the Prime Minister doing much the same thing ? (See Box).

Worse, before casting his vote the PM took out a procession. After casting his vote, he addressed a gathering, ignoring the fact that he was on the voting day in Gujarat just a voter, neither a PM nor a candidate. And no voter is allowed to do what he did. Indeed, the specific violation carries a punishment of imprisonment up to two years. But the EC was not moved.

The Commission’s reluctance, if not refusal, to take notice of violations on its own has been astounding. It took 30 days to decide on the complaint against the Prime Minister’s Wardha speech. Even more telling is the fact that none of the complaints filed against the Prime Minister and Amit Shah were logged on the Commission’s website along with the 500 and odd complaints related to MCC violation.

The Commission capped its bizarre series of commissions and omissions by debarring the state BJP President in Gujarat from campaigning between May 2 and May 5—seemingly oblivious to the fact that elections got over in Gujarat on April 23.

The complaint against Jitu Vaghani was lodged on April 7 and the Commission decided to impose the ban on April 30. Asked what is the use of banning him after the polling in Gujarat, the Commission held that Vaghani happens to be a star campaigner for the party and was being debarred from campaigning in other parts of the country. Why was the star campaigner allowed to campaign unhindered in Gujarat is the question that the Commission side stepped.

Weakest or not, the Election Commission in 2019 is said to be the least experienced. Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora became a member in September 2017 and got elevated as the CEC in December, 2018. The other two members of the Commission, Ashok Lavasa and Sushil Chandra were appointed in January, 2018 and February, 2019 respectively.

But Arora, who is the most experienced of the three, is said to have supervised 10 assembly elections so far whereas V.S. Sampath, who was the CEC in 2014, had supervised 25 assembly elections by then.

Former Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi went on record to acknowledge that the credibility of the Election Commission has indeed taken a beating in recent months.

The most powerful Election Commission in the democratic world will take a long time to recover.