This election reminds me of the Emergency. Everything went off fine because the candidates were mortally scared.” – A top police official in Bangalore, after the first round of elections on November 26 to the Karnataka Assembly.

Exactly a year ago, when five north Indian states went to the polls, T.N. Seshan managed to stamp his authority on the country’s electoral system by conducting the cleanest elections in living memory. Last fortnight, as voters in four states trooped to the polling booths, candidates, political parties and the people alike, realised that the combative Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) had achieved an encore.

The elections were among the most lacklustre in recent times. Missing were the colour and the hubbub of a campaign. No conspicuous consumption. No vulgar displays of garish posters, cutouts and banners, nor the din of a hundred loudspeakers. Also missing were the instances of rigging and misuse of government machinery which had become an integral part of democracy at work in this country.

Not to speak of the motor cavalcades that wound through the dusty village roads as VIPs hit the campaign trail. But this time, even P.V. Narasimha Rao’s convoys consisted of just a handful of cars. Said an Election Commission official: “The rules have been laid down and they apply to everyone. Now you either play by the rules or risk ejection.”

Seshan had served notice at the outset that he meant business. In a move that sent Shockwaves through the political establishment, he denounced the Welfare Minister Sitaram Kesari and the Food Minister Kalpnath Rai for attempting to influence voters.

There is little doubt that his complaint was valid as far as the Model Code of Conduct was concerned, but his advice to the prime minister to remove them from the cabinet stirred a public controversy. Questions abound whether the CEC overstepped his brief by offering such unsolicited advice to the Government.

But Seshan brushed aside such charges. He told INDIA TODAY: “These were deliberate attempts to influence voters and went against the model code. I wrote to the party president and I have been assured that it will not happen again.”

The Model Code of Conduct is hardly a Seshan invention, but it required a Seshan – not known for ambiguities – to effectively use it to clean up the entire election process.
The implementation of the directives was strictly monitored and had the desired effect. Consider just a few examples:

• At his public meetings, seeking votes for the Congress(I) candidates, Rao abandoned the practice of introducing the local candidates and instead sought votes for the Congress(I) party in general. This was in adherence to the CEC directive that costs of the meeting would otherwise be added to the candidates expenses.
• In Karnataka’s Afzalpur constituency, flamboyant former chief minister S. Bangarappa, arriving late, had to wind up his speech in exactly five minutes. The reason: Seshan’s diktat that campaigning must be wound up by 10 p.m.
• In Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh Social Welfare Minister P. Janardhan Reddy had to forgo addressing a meeting as the public address system had been installed without permission.

There are enough other examples to show that Seshan’s big stick worked. In Karnataka’s Gulbarga district, more than 20 cases were registered against candidates for not filing daily expenditure reports, while in Andhra’s Cuddapah district, one candidate was arrested.

Elsewhere, at least three officers were suspended for covertly aligning with candidates. And in all constituencies, candidates had to furnish lists of vehicles used for electioneering and returning officers often checked odometer readings to tally these with the daily expenditure statements.

Strict monitoring of attempts at communal appeasement saw the Congress(I)’s effort to influence Muslims by starting a 10-minute Urdu news bulletin on Bangalore Doordarshan come a cropper. The BJP which had prepared video films of the aborted flag hoisting incident at the Hubli Maidan could not exhibit these.

Money and muscle power were not the only things that Seshan tried to curtail. In all states, dry days were declared six days before polling. Said the district’s deputy commissioner P. Madan Gopal: “Nobody dared to violate the law.”

There were no less than 150 election observers in the four states to see that nobody dared. Besides, there were 120 audit observers in Andhra, 116 in Karnataka, 60 in Sikkim and 40 in Goa, monitoring the election expenses of each candidate.

Acknowledging that the expense’ ceiling, set more than a decade ago, was woefully inadequate by today’s standards, the Government had raised it to more realistic levels: from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1.5 lakh in Andhra, Rs40,000 to Rs 1.35 lakh in Karnataka, Rs 10,000 to Rs 50,000 in Goa and Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 in Sikkim.

The CEC responded to the Government’s generosity by sending the unambiguous message that any violation of the ceiling would not be pardoned. Besides, his experience at last November’s elections in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh – where voter turnout was about 10 per cent higher than the 1991 election, due to absence of fears about poll-related trouble – saw him shoot off letters to the chief secretaries of all four states to ensure that criminals had no role in the elections.

ALL these directives were backed by a round-the-clock feedback system with a control room at the EC headquarters, with an officer in charge of each state. They recorded, screened and verified each complaint independently and through observers. Individual candidates, politicial parties, returning officers and central observers were thus able to keep in close touch with the CEC and the state elections officers without much problem.

“All along we have heard about free and fair polls. Now Seshan is making it a reality,” gushed an EC official. But not everyone would agree with such adulation. His carefully cultivated image as an impartial referee is now coming under closer scrutiny, thanks mostly to Seshan himself.

Controversy over his “advice” to the prime minister regarding the two senior ministers was still raging when Seshan arrived in Puttaparthi to seek the blessings of Sathya Sai Baba. Another devotee who happened to be around was Rao. His praise for Rao, who himself was involved in a tough election campaign, has, predictably enough, raised the hackles of opposition politicians, besides questions about his own impartial credentials, creating yet another controversy even in the midst of his latest crusade for electoral reform.

• with S. RAI in Bangalore A.K. Menon in Hyderabad and A. Damodaran

Ref:  India Today