AA Edit | Don’t give up consensus path to poll transparency
It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting, goes a gem of verity. Is that under threat in India as questions are being raised about the integrity of the electoral process now. Adding grist to the mill is the government’s recent move to amend Rule 93 of the Conduct of Elections Rules of 1961 to restrict public access to electronic documents like CCTV footage, webcasting data and video recordings of candidates during polls.
The Congress has gone to the Supreme Court to test the legality of the amendments that avowedly aim to prevent the misuse of such documents and data. Such an effort to obfuscate a part of the election process in the modern era, when the ubiquitous CCTV camera captures all and adds to the veracity of the polling process, that can be verified in case of doubts being raised by candidates or political parties, is uncalled for.
It is a patently weak excuse that the misuse of CCTV camera footage from inside polling booths could compromise voter secrecy and that such footage could be used to create fake narratives through AI technology, which is what the EC said in defence of the changes in the rules governing the conduct of polls. While there is no foolproof defence yet against doctoring videos and faking the narrative, it is not prevalent as to endanger the very system of fair and free polling that has evolved in India over 73 years since 1951.
The government and EC’s defensive move in amending the rule is clearly owed to the Punjab and Haryana high court asking it to share all documents relating to the Haryana Assembly elections, including the electronic footage, to a citizen. The counter-measure is clearly a peevish reaction to transparency being sought in a state poll where the counting process led to wild swings in leads and questions cropping up about voter turnout percentages, etc.
Truth to tell, the Indian election system that saw about two-thirds of an eligible electorate of 976 million turn up to vote in the Lok Sabha polls of 2024 has been one of the fairest in terms of access to the polling booth for those who have passed the eligible age. Opposition parties may cry foul while arguing, without tangible proof, that the EVMs can be tampered with, but while they are happy with the results that the same EVMs furnish when they win, they become sore losers when they are not victorious.
And yet there is nothing wrong with the Opposition’s claim that there is a greater need to make the process more transparent and accountable. Furthermore, there is an absolute need for a consensus approach from the EC to changing any of the rules that have been seen to be working well enough for decades for there to be any unilateral amendments as in the case of the documents and data now.
How much effort would it take to seek a consensus among the 20 or so major national and regional parties and the stakeholders like the voters before making any change to the fundamental rules, including accessibility to verify the polling process. Remember the saying, probably apocryphal, of Joseph Stalin that “it’s not the people who vote that count, it’s the people who count the votes”. To make them count, any desire to kill transparency must be exterminated if the polling process for the world’s biggest electorate is to keep its fair name.