Article
‘Resolution’ of Complaints by the Election Commission of India: A Timeline
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 […]
Implementing a Supreme Court Judgment, Election Commission of India-Style
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, […]
Has the Election Commission violated the Constitution?
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 […]
पहले आंतरिक लोकतंत्र को सुनिश्चित करें राजनीतिक पार्टियां
Lok Sabha Elections 2024 | Present at polls, missing in politics?
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 […]
Was the EC Waiting for the SC to Remind it of the Seriousness of its Responsibility?
It is now clear that the ECI had itself done this calculation but was holding back the total number of voters which it has now, after encouragement by the SC, magnanimously decided to disclose. The Election Commission of India has released the “absolute number of voters for all completed phases” in a press note issued […]
ECI Has Forgotten Elections Aren’t Just About Parties – They’re About the People
The Election Commission’s letter to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge makes the ECI appear to be one of the contestants in the electoral fray. As a longtime observer of the electoral and political scene in India, I write this with great anguish. What prompts this piece is the letter that the Election Commission of India (ECI) […]
An Unclear and Incomplete Verdict | On the Supreme Court’s EVM-VVPAT Judgment
After extolling the virtues of the current system, the judgment ends with two directions to the ECI. The 26 April 2024 judgment of the Supreme Court in what has come to be known as the EVM-VVPAT judgment, is not surprising but does leave some loose ends. Reading the entire judgment in totality, some parts […]
FM on Reviving Electoral Bonds: A Memory From the Past or a Continuing Saga?
There have been ample and unambiguous signals that the electoral bonds story is far from over. On 26 March 2024, former Finance and Economic Affairs Secretary of India Subhash Chandra Garg wrote a piece titled Electoral Bonds Are Now History. Did the Government Let the Donors Down? As the dust was still settling down on […]