Election Commission's silence makes parties more daring in 2014

Polls in India generally bring out the worst in parties, but hitting out at the Election Commission at every opportunity, besides the hate speeches aimed at polarising voters, is undoubtedly the flavour of Season 2014.

Updated on: May 9, 2014, 02:12:04 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

Polls in India generally bring out the worst in parties, but hitting out at the Election Commission at every opportunity — besides the hate speeches aimed at polarising voters — is undoubtedly the flavour of Season 2014.

Even before the BJP and its PM candidate Narendra Modi accused the poll panel of bias, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan and DMK leader Karunanidhi, among others, had taken on the commission.

Unlike in the past, the EC has decided this time to remain silent till Chief Election Commissioner VS Sampath on Thursday deplored the criticism. A day before deputy election commissioner Vinod Zutshi had said they took the “criticism” on a positive note.

Read: EC rejects allegations of bias, says Modi's Varanasi rally cancelled due to security

Some former election commissioners, however, blamed the commission for its image, saying it had been reactive rather than proactive in this election. “We nipped the offences in the bud. An explanation was sought from a leader as soon as instances of model code violation came to our notice. Nowadays, the EC takes a couple of days to react,” a former CEC, who refused to be quoted, said.

In the first week of April, Banerjee tried to defy the commission by not following its order to transfer eight officials deployed for poll duty. She said the commission didn’t have the powers to transfer officials without her consent.

Banerjee even dared the EC to take action against her government. But she relented once the commission threatened to invoke its Constitutional powers against the state government and initiate disciplinary proceedings against the chief secretary.

Read: Mamata remains adamant, tells EC won't transfer officials

Her arch rival in the state, the CPM also accused the EC of not doing enough to prevent rigging and violence. Modi also dared the EC to book him for accusing poll officials of favouring the Trinamool Congress.

“I am bringing serious allegations against you, the Election Commission. EC officials, who are likely to be present in this rally, and those elsewhere in the state, please take note of it. Please do your duty. Whoever has appointed you, it is your responsibility to ensure free and fair polling,” he said at a rally Asansol on Friday.

The commission also faced the charge of having double standards when it lifted the ban on BJP leader Amit Shah, but kept it on Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan. Both of them were banned after they were accused of hate speeches in a bid to polarise voters in the riot-hit Muzzafarnagar.

Read: Notice to Azam Khan for abusing EC

The ban on Shah was lifted after he apologised, but Khan chose to stick to his statement. He even termed the poll body as the new CBI and said it was anti-minority and dictatorial.

Earlier, former Tamil Nadu CM and DMK boss M Karunanidhi cast doubt over the EC’s neutrality when refused to act on its complaints of bias against local poll officials.

He told reporters in April that they know whether the commission was neutral or pretending to be so.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Follow India news real-time updates and the latest news covered on Hindustan Times, featuring today's critical updates on Sonam Wangchuk Hunger Strike LIVE and more across India.