I believe it is the institutions, or more specifically, institutional capture that has contributed very significantly to this success. Political commentary comes in two broad forms. The commentator either supports a particular ideology or political thinking, or tends or pretends to be neutral and tries to explain events or situations seemingly “objectively”. Regardless of the […]
The RSS kind-of adopted the India Against Corruption movement from behind the scenes. The commanding win of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the Delhi assembly elections , and the almost total decimation of the Indian National Congress (INC) – couldn’t win a single seat in three consecutive elections – have […]
Given that the chief election commissioner often mentions the guiding principle of the ECI to be ‘disclosure’, it should not be unreasonable to expect the rationale behind this decision to be made public. On January 7, in a press conference lasting over an hour, the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced that the polling for […]
In our excessive focus on EVMs we often fail to look at the other components that demand our attention and reform to improve India’s electoral process. There has been a lot of debate in India about manipulation of elections, their results, and, in particular, about Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). Ever since over a million EVMs […]
Poll rule tweak is in keeping with stonewalling by the ECI over the past few years ADDRESSING a press conference on March 13 this year, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar asserted: “Hamare teen hee pillar hain — disclosure, disclosure, disclosure… Disclose everything to the public, to the voter, the voter have (sic) right to […]
A factual narration of what transpired when a citizen lodged a complaint for violation of the MCC to the highest levels in the ECI. Consider the following timeline: April 22, 2024: A complaint is lodged with the Election Commission of India (ECI), for violation of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) by a star campaigner of one of […]
The way the ECI has decided to operationalise the entire exercise of ‘checking and verification’ mandated by the Supreme Court, is unlikely to lead to anything substantive. On April 26, 2024, the Supreme Court delivered the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) judgment rejecting the petitioners’ prayers for 100% counting of VVPAT slips and making Form 17C, […]
It deliberately chose to give the four ‘star campaigners’ of the Lok Sabha elections preferential treatment by not taking action for breaching the poll code. “Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar told Scroll on Monday that the Election Commission had deliberated over poll code violations during the 2024 general elections at length and had decided to […]
The slow growth rate of the number of women contesting in elections is concerning. The trend makes it necessary to deconstruct the word ‘participation’ for the purpose of understanding what it actually means. Women constituted 48.41 per cent of India’s population in 2022, according to the latest available estimates from the World Bank. This would […]