Evasive Election Commission erodes trust in poll processes

Allegations made by Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi about electoral malpractices in Haryana raise questions about the integrity of the polls and the credibility of the Election Commission of India (ECI). Gandhi’s charges, made during his media interaction on Wednesday, are not a blanket statement on elections in the country, but with no credible explanations coming from the EC, apprehensions about its functioning will remain. If the LoP’s previous allegations were about individual constituencies, such as Mahadevapura and Aland in Karnataka, he has now claimed that the entire Assembly election in Haryana, held in November 2024, was ‘stolen’ by the BJP, with support from the EC. ‘Operation Sarkar Chori’, he said, was orchestrated to deny the Congress a landslide victory as predicted by multiple exit polls and opinion polls.

Gandhi shared the list of voters in Haryana’s Rai Assembly constituency, in which the photograph of a Brazilian female model was seen as used 22 times across 10 booths, as voters with different names. He claimed that one in eight voters in Haryana was fake (over 25 lakh voters) and 1,24,177 voters in the state had fake photographs on the rolls. Despite this, the Congress lost eight seats by a cumulative margin of 22,779 votes. Gandhi’s statements are based on the EC’s records, and the malpractices he has pointed out are similar to the ones he has highlighted in the past. There is a pattern of manipulation in voters’ lists, and with similar discrepancies coming to the fore in other parts of the country, it is upon the EC to address, with credible evidence, the allegations of a centralised plan to tamper with the elections, to the advantage of the BJP.

Neither the EC nor the BJP has given convincing responses to Gandhi’s charges. The Commission has outrightly denied any malpractice and has asked why the voters’ lists were not vetted by the Congress booth agents. Gandhi has pointed out that the lists were made available too late for an examination. In any case, the EC should not be deflecting the questions by posing its own questions when the responsibility of fair conduct of the polls rests with the Commission. The BJP, on expected lines, has sought to ridicule and vilify Gandhi. Still, there are no answers. Asking the LoP to approach the court does not make sense. The situation warrants urgent correction, not long-drawn legal redress. Citizens have a right to free and fair elections, and faltering institutions weaken the country’s democratic foundations.