CEC Om Prakash Rawat is emerging as a voice of conscience

— N R Mohanty —

Former CEC Om Prakash Rawat is emerging as a voice of conscience. We must compliment him for keeping the nation above self. We are living at a time when we find two kinds of retired officials who held top constitutional positions in the past: some who are toadies, who are openly singing peans to the Modi regime to seek some favour or other; there are others who can see the havoc the Modi establishment is wreaking on the Indian constitutional system; but most of them keep it to themselves, lest they incur the wrath of a vengeful government. It’s only a few top retired officials who have dared to stand up on the public square and call a spade a spade.

Former chief election commissioner (CEC) Om Prakash Rawat is one such officer who is clearly emerging as a forceful voice of conscience; he is not taking cudgels against PM Modi’s government directly, but he is questioning the conduct of the Election Commission which is patently acting as the extended arm of PM Modi’s party, the BJP.

I watched a series of interviews Mr Rawat gave to the TV and YouTube channels yesterday on his reaction to the press conference held by the current CEC Gyanesh lKumar this weekend. The former CEC was unequivocal: the combative tone adopted by CEC Kumar against the complaint raised by the leader of the opposition reaffirmed the impression that the EC has entered into the arena of politics, that it’s acting at the behest of the ruling dispensation to take on the opposition.

Mr Rawat was categorical: that the EC has been caught in the web of its own making on both counts: on the issue of the SIR and on its response to the allegations of the malpractices.

The former CEC insists that the Election Commission has opened a Pandora’s box by hurriedly setting in motion an exercise as elaborate as SIR. It would need at least six months to satisfactorily complete such an intensive exercise statewide, he says.

What made the Election Commission’s intent suspect was its opacity, its brazen attempt to transfer the burden of proving the eligibility to vote to voters themselves, even for those who have voted several times in the past, Mr Rawat says.

Did you need the intervention of the apex court to accept Aadhar as one of the several documents for the existing voters to establish their identity? Why did you need the Supreme Court to force your hand to publish the list of names deleted from the existing electoral roll? What did you want to hide and why? These are the tell-tale posers the former CEC has for his current counterpart.

Mr Rawat was equally harsh on the conduct of the Election Commission with regard to the allegations made by Rahul Gandhi about the irregularities in Bengaluru’s Mahadevapura constituency. The complaints were only about one assembly constituency. There was no need to issue notices to one lakh people, as CEC Kumar said in his defensive response in the press conference. A central team of the Commission, with the support of the state electoral officers, could have descended on the constituency and looked into most of the complaints in a single day, putting on record which allegations had a grain of truth and which were mere hogwash. That would have enhanced the credibility of the Election Commission, he said.

Mr Rawat alluded to a series of issues that the Congress party had flagged in a constituency in Madhya Pradesh when he was the CEC. He proactively constituted a committee, took all party representatives to the area and investigated all the charges. By the same night, the Election Commission came out with its report and every party accepted it as the whole exercise was evidently transparent.

Transparency is the key to the credibility, the former CEC said. Mr Kumar and his colleagues are facing the flak because they are proactively seeking to hide things from the citizens of the country. In the process, they are besmirching the formidable reputation that the Election Commission has built over decades as an honest umpire in India’s mammoth electoral process, Mr Rawat bemoaned.

Thank you, Mr Rawat, for your courage of conviction to speak up when our constitutional framework is under assault and most of those whose voices matter have chosen to be the lackeys of the assaulters!