There was a time when the public’s trust in the Election Commission of India (ECI) was higher than its trust in the judiciary. In his address on the occasion of the ECI’s golden jubilee in 2001, the then President, K.R. Narayanan, cited the finding of an opinion poll and said: “...people rated the Election Commission very high, far ahead of... even the judiciary.”
Today, that trust is eroding. A survey conducted by Lokniti-CSDS in six States between July 31 and August 13 found “a consistent decline in high trust in the ECI across all six States and a corresponding increase in the numbers of those who do not trust the ECI”. In Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, the percentage of people who do not trust the ECI went up from 11 per cent in 2019 to 31 per cent and 30 per cent respectively, now. In Kerala, it rose from 10 per cent to 24 per cent; in Madhya Pradesh, it rose from 6 per cent to 22 per cent.
Overall, 21.7 per cent of the survey’s respondents said that the ECI was working “completely” under pressure from the government; 31.7 per cent said it was “somewhat” under pressure; only 11.6 per cent said that the ECI was “not at all” under pressure. The ECI’s crisis of credibility is now deep.
The loss of credibility is well-earned by the ECI, both by its own conduct and by the way it has now come to be constituted. The selection committee that picks Election Commissioners (ECs) and the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) now has a government majority of two to one. This has rendered the appointment of ECs and the CEC akin to any other routine bureaucratic posting.
But that need not necessarily render them partisans of the ruling party. We must not forget that T.N. Seshan was also appointed by the government of the day. But his conduct in office was exemplarily independent. He fiercely asserted the commission’s autonomy. The conduct of the present ECs and the CEC is in stark contrast to that.
During the run-up to the 2024 general election, the ECI did not apply the Model Code of Conduct to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling party’s lead campaigners. The Prime Minister could deliver as many as 110 hate speeches unchecked.
Also, the phasing of the election schedule defied logic. It was open to suspicion that it was designed to give the ruling party at the Centre an advantage. Consider the lack of logic in the following: Andhra Pradesh, which has 25 seats, went to the polls in a single phase, but Odisha, which has only 21 seats, voted in four phases. Tamil Nadu, which has 39 seats, voted in one phase, but Bihar, which has only 1 seat more, had a seven-phase election.
On polling figures, the ECI has no credible explanation for the inordinate delay in announcing the final numbers. It took 11 days to announce the final polling tally for the first phase. For the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh phases, the delay was 4, 4, 4, 3, 3, and 5 days, respectively.
Hollow claims
The ECI’s claims of logistical and connectivity challenges and exhaustion suffered by polling personnel are unconvincing. The example of Chandigarh, a small Lok Sabha constituency with a radius of 15 kilometres, first-rate connectivity, and having as few as 614 polling booths and registering a turnout of only 4,48,547 voters, discredits the ECI’s excuses. The election body took five days to announce the constituency’s final voter turnout. The discrepancy between the provisional and the final voting figures there was 5.18 per cent. What logistical and other challenges the ECI faced there remains a mystery.
Full details of the second phase are still not available, more than a year after the election. The ECI has not yet given the State-wise and constituency-wise provisional polling data for the phase. We have only the final polling data. One cannot, therefore, know what the discrepancy is between the provisional figure and the final tally of polling for this phase in different States.
At a protest over the alleged “vote chori” and against the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Bihar, in Kolkata on August 12. | Photo Credit: MANVENDER VASHIST LAV/PTI
There is, indeed, cause for deep suspicion about this phase because the strike rate of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the BJP was extraordinarily high in it. For example, out of the eight seats that went to the polls in Uttar Pradesh in this phase, all were won by the BJP/NDA.
The following are the coalition’s strike rate figures for other States where some seats went to the polls in phase 2: 3 out of 3 in West Bengal, 6 out of 6 in Madhya Pradesh, 3 out of 3 in Chhattisgarh, 1 out of 1 in Tripura, 1 out of 1 in Jammu and Kashmir, 12 out of 14 in Karnataka, 10 out of 13 in Rajasthan, and 4 out of 5 in Assam.
Is the high strike rate of the BJP/NDA in any way related to non-revelation of full poll data for this phase? The suspicion lingers.
High discrepancy
Meticulous research by experts of the Vote for Democracy (VfD) group revealed that there is an unusually high discrepancy between the provisional polling figures announced after the official closing time of voting and the final polling figures notified by the ECI after a delay of several days. The discrepancy amounted to around 5 crore votes: 4,65,46,885 to be precise.
The increase was as high as 12.54 per cent in Andhra Pradesh and 12.48 per cent in Odisha. In both the States, the BJP/NDA scored remarkably high: in Andhra Pradesh, it won 21 out of 25 seats, while in Odisha it won 20 out of 21 seats.
In sharp contrast, in Uttar Pradesh, in the five phases out of seven where the difference was well under 0.50 per cent, its score was low. To illustrate, in phase 3, the discrepancy was 0.21 per cent and it could win only 4 out of 10 seats.
In phases 4, 5, 6, and 7, the discrepancy was 0.34 per cent, 0.23 per cent, 0.01 per cent, and 0.25 per cent respectively. The score of the BJP/NDA in these phases was 8 out of 13, 4 out of 14, 3 out of 14, and 7 out of 13 respectively. The overall tally of the BJP/NDA in the State came down from 64 in 2019 to 36 in 2024.
This shows that the smaller the discrepancy between provisional and final voting figures, the lower the gains are for the BJP/NDA. And the larger the discrepancy, the higher its gains. It is difficult to draw any other inference.
Serious irregularities
There is one more irregularity in the 2024 election figures accessed from the ECI’s data that merits serious attention. Association for Democratic Reforms, a non-profit organisation, reported that there are discrepancies between votes polled and votes counted in 538 out of 542 constituencies that voted.
Except in 4 seats out of 542, namely Amreli, Attingal, Lakshadweep, and Daman & Diu, there was a discrepancy between the votes recorded in the electronic voting machines and the votes counted as reported by the ECI.
In 176 constituencies, a total of 35,093 more votes were counted. In 362 constituencies, 5,54,598 fewer votes were counted. A total discrepancy of 5,89,691 votes was detected in 538 constituencies. The ECI has no explanation for this gross irregularity.
Then there is another worrying irregularity. The last phase of polling was held on June 1, 2024. Counting was held and results were declared on June 4. But the final election data of the seventh phase was announced by the ECI on June 6, two days after the results were declared.
In other words, two full days after declaring the results, the ECI told the country how many votes were actually cast in the last phase. If the ECI thinks that it does not matter that polling numbers were declared after the results were announced, it should explain why the country should not worry about it.
Unreleased data
The ECI’s 2024 data present yet another mystery. Final voting figures are available State-wise as well as constituency-wise for all the phases. However, constituency-wise provisional polling data are not available for any phase. Even in this mystery, phase 2 has an additional distinction: for this phase, both constituency-wise and State-wise preliminary polling figures have not been revealed by the ECI, even as of today. We are yet to learn how the ECI would justify this.
All these anomalies inexorably lead to one inference: the mandate of 2024 is questionable. The data from the VfD report show that an increase of nearly five crore votes could have resulted in a minimum of 79 seats across 15 States changing hands. If these irregularities had not taken place, the ruling BJP-NDA in all likelihood could have been limited to 214 seats and the opposition alliance might have had a tally of 303 seats.
A Booth Level Officer checks documents during the ECI’s Special Intensive Revision, in Bihar’s Araria district on July 8. | Photo Credit: SHASHI SHEKHAR KASHYAP
There is a reason why the BJP-led NDA has reduced the ECI to a government department-like entity and made its functioning unaccountable and its practices opaque.
No vote for majoritarianism
The country’s electorate historically has never given a mandate to a majoritarian, divisive agenda. When the BJP’s predecessor, the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, went to the polls on a Hindu majoritarian plank, its best ever vote share never even touched 10 per cent. Only when it put aside its majoritarian agenda was the BJP able to increase its popular vote and manage to reach 25 per cent vote share and attract allies to stitch a coalition capable of forming the government.
For a long time, however, the party had to battle taunts of a “hidden” agenda and it had to repeatedly declare its faith in India’s secular creed. To be acceptable, it often had to say that it too was secular, “genuinely” secular, but secular, nonetheless.
It is important to recall that the 2014 and 2019 campaign pitches of the BJP-led NDA were not majoritarian. They emphasised development, removal of poverty, fighting corruption, bringing back black money stashed abroad, creating jobs, national security, ending policy paralysis, etc. In the run-up to the 2014 general election, Modi, who was the prime ministerial candidate, declared that the fight was not between Hindus and Muslims but between Hindus and Muslims on one side and poverty and unemployment on the other.
However, in 2024 the BJP’s pitch was unabashedly communal, divisive, and majoritarian. Its agenda to turn India into a Hindu rashtra and recast the republic into a “civilisational state” came to the fore. Broad hints were dropped that a new Constitution would be brought in. Consecration of the Ayodhya Ram temple, abolition of Article 370, and decisive moves towards a uniform civil code too were major themes in the campaign. The Prime Minister’s rhetoric prominently featured dog whistles.
Election manipulation
When sparsely attended rallies made it apparent that the electorate was hostile to the communal and divisive pitch, the BJP/NDA had no option but to resort to election manipulation to retain power. The delay of 11 days in announcing the final voting figures for phase 1 and the non-revelation of the provisional data of phase 2 can only be seen in this light. Similarly, the delay of three to five days in announcing the final polling figures for the remaining phases of polling. With a robust digital communications network in the country, even a day’s delay in making the final data public is unjustifiable.
If doubts are being cast over the sanctity of the 2024 mandate, the responsibility for it rests entirely on the ECI. The Commission has become unaccountable and inaccessible. It stonewalls RTI queries. It does not meet civic groups or respond to memorandums submitted by them. It rarely speaks to the media, and when it does, it makes grotesque remarks such as machine-readable voter lists would be doctored.
It invokes privacy concerns to withhold and destroy video recordings of the electoral process. It says it does not have the names and contact numbers of Returning Officers. It collaborates with the government to amend Rule 93(2)(a) of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, to deny citizens access to many critical election records. The ECI has not made Form 17C Part-I available in the public domain for anyone to verify exactly how many votes were cast in each booth in the country.
While the nation’s attention is focussed on the “voter cleansing” (à la ethnic cleansing) that is happening in the name of Special Intensive Revision in Bihar, it is important not to lose sight of the ECI’s gross irregularities that render the Lok Sabha 2024 mandate questionable.
If questions are not raised and the ECI is not compelled to be transparent and accountable, future elections in the country will become even more farcical. If the 5 crore vote discrepancy in the 2024 election is not called out, the next election might see a 10 crore vote increase and the one after that might even have a 20 crore increase. The danger of India turning into a notional democracy is real.
Parakala Prabhakar is a political economist and author of The Crooked Timber of New India.
Article 14 of the Indian Constitution says: “The state shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India.”
