‘All political parties, sadly, remain united in their opposition to electoral reforms. Abuse of money power in elections and campaign funding top the list of reforms.’
NEW DELHI: ‘My strike rate with writers was nearly 50% as the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC). It rose to 90% when I left the office,” former CEC S.Y. Quraishi says with a tinge of humour, while recounting how more people turned down his offer to write for his latest book, The Great March of Democracy: Seven Decades of India’s Elections (Penguin, Rs 699), when he was holding the Constitutional position.
The book’s journey began during the diamond jubilee of the Election Commission of India in 2010-11. Quraishi, as the 17th CEC of India, had invited heads of Election Commissions from across the world. Nearly 35 such dignitaries attended, along with many experts in the field of election management. “I felt the need to capture the admiration they had for Indian elections as a gold standard for the world on paper. I, therefore, requested 25 selected persons to contribute articles related to the subject,” recalls the former CEC. Quraishi received 13 essays promptly. Unfortunately, the volume got caught up in “frustrating negotiations” with the proposed publisher at the time.
“Finally, I took it as a challenge in October 2018 to revive the project with some new essays to complement the original collection. To my pleasant surprise, of the 15 persons I wrote, 13 responded promptly and positively,” says Quraishi, who has dedicated the book to “the founding fathers of the Constitution, and to Sukumar Sen and T.N. Seshan”, the first and the 10th CEC respectively. “The country owes a great debt to all three,” affirms the author.
In an exclusive interview with The Sunday Guardian, Quraishi explains how Indian democracy is a big success story despite our failure to bring in electoral reforms, why EVMs cannot be hacked, and how the controversy is “politically-motivated” and “nothing short of melodramatic”. The following are edited excerpts of the interview:
Q: Yourself being the former Chief Election Commissioner, can you tell us what makes Indian democracy so unique and strong, despite its flaws?
A: In my opinion, India has been a trailblazer in many aspects. The critics vastly outnumbered the hopeful after we gained Independence. We were even mocked internationally for conducting elections through the universal adult franchise in a country with 84% illiteracy at the time. India is a country of continental proportions, with unfathomable diversity. Yet, where the rest of the post-colonial world was torn apart by authoritarianism and wars, we survived, thrived and proved the doubting Thomases wrong.
Having said that, we are facing acute challenges of inequality, communalism, corruption and casteism at the moment. It is no wonder that despite scoring excellently in the conduct of elections, our country continues to be characterised as a flawed democracy by the World Democracy Index of the Economist Intelligence Unit. This continues to show that we have matured electorally, but we have a long way to go in governance and socio-economic indicators. We can’t afford to get complacent, especially with the issue of electoral reforms that are urgently needed at the moment.
Q: What explains the long delay in electoral reforms in the country, despite so much clamouring and demand from the people of India?
A: A plethora of reforms is pending in the country today. Decriminalisation of politics and abuse of money power in elections and campaign funding top the list. All political parties, sadly, remain united in their opposition to meaningful electoral reforms. In fact, they tend to compete with each other in putting up with criminal and rich candidates in the name of winnability. The one “reform” that was brought in, namely the electoral bonds, has unfortunately made the condition predictably worse and has legalised and institutionalised crony capitalism. Corporates can now donate 100% of the profits to one political party and control the politics of the country.
The Supreme Court verdict on criminalisation of politics (2018) was disappointing as it put the ball back in the EC’s court, instead of pressing the government to bring in legislation. It is hard to imagine why political parties will legislate against their self-interest. No party agrees upon an independent audit of their accounts. They have sham inner-party elections for choosing candidates. These issues have good solutions already tried and tested in many countries of the world.
Q: EVMs have been in news for wrong reasons, of late. Recently the controversy took a more ugly turn when foreign soil was used to raise this issue. How do you react to this?
A: The conference in London turned out to be anti-climactic and nothing short of melodramatic. There is a well-documented history of such claims, and the allegations of Shah Shuja are not a first. Besides individuals, every political party has raised doubts about these machines at some time or the other and demanded a return to the ballot paper. But they have also won elections with the same machines. The EC has repeatedly challenged the conspiracy theorists to try their hand on the EVM. No party has accepted these hackathon challenges. Why?
Q: Can EVMs be hacked and used to distort election results? If not, why this issue refuses to die down?
A: A plain and simple answer is a confident “No”. No allegations of hacking have ever been proven, and politically motivated claims and demonstrations on media channels have now become something of a laughing stock. The Supreme Court in 2013 lauded the initiative of the EC to bring in VVPATs (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails) to make the voting process fully transparent and remove all doubts from the minds of the voters. It also directed the Centre to provide adequate funds for the same. Since 2015, there have been a number of state elections. Voter slips from 1,500 machines have been tallied since then, and not a single mismatch has been detected.
The EVMs and VVPATs have malfunctioned sometimes, but there is a fundamental difference between a machine breaking down due to weather conditions and rigging of elections. These two issues are being used interchangeably, to the detriment of the credibility of the electoral process, which is central to the legitimacy of democracy.
The solution is keeping enough reserves of machines and counting more than one machine per constituency to remove every doubt in the minds of all parties. There are many proposals from various stakeholders regarding the sample size of the number of machines to be counted. EC should get the advice of Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata to get the most scientific sample size to count. That should be a clincher in the debate.
Q: Among the many challenges that you faced as CEC, which were the most significant ones?
A: Security is always a threat. Then the abuse of money power continues to be a great challenge and a threat to the purity of the electoral process. Hate speech during campaigns has been on the increase which is a cause of increasing concern.
Q: Did you ever face any interference from the executive? How did you deal with that?
A: The executive knows that the Election Commission is fiercely independent. Nobody dares to interfere. However, the appointment system of the commissioners is totally flawed, being made by the government of the day. A bipartisan system based on the collegium system, which exists for the appointment of judges, CVC and CIC, will be a considerable remedy.
The demand for appointment of ECs through a collegium has received massive support from the civil society and also in the 2015 Law Commission Report. The ruling parties refuse to let go of their power to appoint the Chief Election Commissioner and other ECs. Even though Parliament brought in a Bill in 1991 to specify the terms of service, it fell short of making a law for the appointment of commissioners.
Over the years, the commissioners have occasionally been accused of being stooges of the government that appointed them, though no misconduct has ever been proven. Isn’t that mental harassment and a source of anguish for people doing their Constitutional duty? It is high time that the Law Commission recommendations regarding the composition of a collegium, appointed by the President and consisting of the Leader of Opposition and the CJI, apart from the PM as the Chairperson, are accepted.
Q: Does the present system discriminate against the two election commissioners?
A: Yes, it does. While they have equal powers to vote in the functioning of the Commission, they feel as if they are on probation as the government can remove them on the CEC’s recommendation. The protection given to the CEC from removal must extend to all three commissioners.