India's National Magazine
From the publishers of THE HINDU

Vol. 16 :: No. 04 :: Feb. 13 - 26, 1999

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THE ELECTION COMMISSION

For a consensus on reforms

Interview with Chief Election Commissioner M.S. Gill.

This year India will see a series of State-level elections; and perhaps even a national one, should the Central coalition led by the Bharatiya Janata Party collapse. All of these will be carried out in a climate of religious intolerance unprecedented in degree. But curiously, little attention has been paid to the working of the body that will manage democracy during this politically fraught period. The reams of reportage provoked by former Chief Election Commissioner T.N. Seshan stand in stark contrast to the thin body of information there is on how the Election Commission actually works today. In what ways is a multi-member Election Commission different from the body Seshan once ran all by himself? What are its priorities and what is its understanding of its own role in the democratic system?

Chief Election Commissioner Manohar Singh Gill has presided over the Election Commission during some of the most difficult phases in Indian democracy, and in the history of the institution itself. Seshan led the Election Commission into a bitter confrontation with the democratic system itself, launching frontal assaults on politicians and political parties and repeatedly threatening to stall or even call off elections if his sky-high demands were not met. That confrontation led, in the end, to the creation of a multi-member Election Commission, with Gill and G.V.G. Krishamurthy brought in by the P.V. Narasimha Rao Government for the express purpose of curbing Seshan's authority.

Seshan's reaction to this challenge was characteristic of the person once described on a Frontline cover as a "Bull In The Election Shop". He promptly challenged in the Supreme Court the appointment of the two new Election Commissioners, claiming that the appointment of more members on the Commission who could together outvote the Chief Election Commissioner was unconstitutional. Although Seshan lost that case, and the contours of the Election Commission were transformed forever, the institution suffered deeply. Seshan's bitter personal differences with the two new Commissioners surfaced time and again, and many people believed that in the process the authority of the Commission was undermined. After Seshan's retirement, many believed that the Election Commission had lost the ability to confront corruption in the election process.

In this exclusive interview to Frontline, Gill discusses in detail the working of the new multi-member system at the Election Commission. Far from subverting the institution's authority, he argues, the multi-member structure has in fact enabled it to respond to challenges with greater purpose and clarity. He addresses issues ranging from the progress made in updating and computerising electoral rolls to his radical, and inevitably controversial, plans for state funding of political parties and ending the entry of criminals into the democratic arena. Reform, Gill points out, is imperative if India's democratic system, in which political parties themselves have a deep stake, is to survive.

The interview given to Praveen Swami and N. Ram was conducted in an unusual setting. Gill, an ardent cricket fan and mountaineering enthusiast, spoke to Frontline in an elegantly appointed box perched high over the pavilion of the Chepauk stadium in Chennai over almost one and a half hours even as the first Test match between India and Pakistan approached its nail-biting climax. Discussions on the future of the Election Commission were punctuated by commentary on the state of play and broader issues of Indian cricket. Perhaps owing to the setting and the ambience, Gill was considerably more relaxed and reflective than he might have been in a formal interview. Excerpts:

What would you describe as the core achievements of the Election Commission after you became Chief Election Commissioner?

Well, the very first thing we worked for was to realise the objective of a three-member Election Commission, a multi-member Election Commission as they call it, working harmoniously and effectively for democracy, as indeed such institutions should, after 50 years of Independence.

While Article 324 of the Constitution allowed such an institution to emerge, we had only a one-member Commission for almost 48 years. I had always believed that almost 50 years on, with the political temperature having risen, these vast powers and duties could not be left to one person, no matter who he was. And I believe India has taken the correct decision for the next century by creating a three-member Commission. We are somewhat similar to a court bench of three judges, and go by majority decisions. I am only one-third of the Commission and am happy to be so, for if my colleagues disagree they must be right and I will go with them.

I want India to focus on this, for unfortunately in all our institutions vyaktigat (individualism) is a big disease. Personalities, personality: this is there in the political parties, in the Cabinet, and even in cricket club committees. I am confident that I have the ability to persuade my two colleagues, through ideas which I believe carry weight. But if I cannot, I must be willing to obey their decision totally. The Election Commission's strength today lies in the fact that it is a single body. We may be three faces, but we are one. While we have equal powers, I believe good institutions do not work by voting, but through free debate leading to a commonality of thought.

In making the Supreme Court judgment on the constitutional role of the Election Comm-ission work, I believe we have played a historic role for the good of Indian democracy. We have instilled confidence in all parties that this is how things should be.

Is this an achievement of individuals, or an institutional project? In the past, there were bitter divisions between members of the Election Commission.

Since I became Chief Election Commissioner there have been no divisions. I do not wish to discuss the past. But you will appreciate that when there was a legal challenge to the very concept of a multi-member Commission, the commitment to put one in place was clearly lacking. I say this with all respect to my predecessor and colleague. And what has been achieved now has been achieved as much by my colleagues in the Commission as by me. In the process, the independence of the Commission has been strengthened.

How is this so? One man, no matter how much of a tiger he is or thinks he is, is amenable to pressure. We are all human. We can all be suborned. But a bench of three high officials, judges of a kind, is another matter altogether. India needs this. And another thing, which I hope people appreciate, is that while we must act with firmness, theatrical confrontations are not necessary. If that means we are soft, so be it. Softness and strength lie in action, not polemic.

So you see the Commission itself as a democratic body, a kind of mirror of the process it manages?

If you look through my years of service, you will see that I do not believe that wisdom goes with rank, which too is a disease both in the public services and in the country as a whole. The records of the Commission show that everyone from the least to the highest in rank have been involved in debate. I welcome anyone standing up and telling me that I am totally wrong. If such criticism leads my colleagues and me to better ideas, that serves the Commission. The credit for these ideas after all comes to us, and I believe it deserves to be shared.

I might add that I do not believe good elections are conducted by the Election Commission, whether one-member or three-member. They are not even made possible by the State Chief Secretaries and Directors-General of Police, though God alone knows they work very hard. A general election with 800,000 polling stations and crores of voters is made possible by everyone from top Indian Administrative Service officers down to the Tehsildars and Block Development Officers. The system would never work without this totality of public servants. This is why I never claim the Commission has averted this or that crisis. It is really the work of many, many people. I am sorry to say that all parties barring none never open their mouths to say a good word about the public services of this country.

In concrete terms, what ideas do you believe the Election Commission has generated which will have a long-term impact on our democracy?

One of the major things we have focussed on, which is now coming to fruition, is the need for clean electoral rolls. These are fundamental to good elections, and all parties recognise this. All of them accuse each other of fudging the rolls and these kinds of things. What is the solution? The electoral roll, I believe, can only be cleansed if it is made accessible. It should not just be stuck on the District Collector's notice board, where nobody reads it. It should be available to every party, every potential candidate, every critic, every voter, and for that matter every paan shop owner, easily and at all times. This is because information will itself bring about corrections.

What we have done is to put voters' parentage on the list, to make the identification of false voters more easily possible. Number two, a new column has been added to the roll, to crosslink names with voter identity cards. And this electoral roll has been computerised. Haryana has completed the process and many other States have also more or less finished their work. We are putting computer systems in place right down to the Returning Officer level, which again is a task that has been finished in some States and should be completed elsewhere soon as well. Funds have been made available for this purpose, and both the Central and State governments have generally been very cooperative. You will soon have electoral rolls available to anyone in printed form and on CD-ROM, for which I will charge a few hundred rupees. Anyone is welcome to buy it, and catch the mischief their opponents may have played with the rolls. The fudging will die through these challenges.

Another important area of work is the voter identity card. As you know, the card was ordered for 60 crore Indian voters in totality. Without getting into the past of the card, I understood clearly that whichever way the idea had come about, it was a long-term necessity. India has committed Rs.1,000 crores to the card project, with half the money coming from the States and the other half from the Centre. Nation-wide, 65 per cent of all cards have been issued so far. Haryana has issued almost 90 per cent of the cards, Maharashtra has achieved 80 per cent and Punjab 75 per cent. Other States have been slower, but even then I am optimistic that the process will reach a conclusion by the end of the year. I should perhaps add that this job is being done not by the Election Commission, but by the State governments.

Within the Election Commission itself, we have set up an extremely sophisticated computer system. How quickly did you get the results during the last Lok Sabha elections? We caught the television channels with their pants down, as they admitted. This was because they didn't have an adequate relay of staff to handle the results that were pouring in. You must also have noticed that we had a Web site up and running. Researchers in Harvard and Cambridge could instantly study results in Tamil Nadu, a fact which brought great credit to this country. This despite the fact that I had only two months to complete the election because Parliament had to meet by the third week of March (for a vote-on-account).

I want to emphasise that these are systems. Men will go away; I will go away and my colleagues will go away. But these systems will last.

Looking back over our half century of Independence, Amartya Sen has argued that if we take stock of our achievements, the holding of free, fair and credible elections in the face of tremendous odds will be at the top of the list. Should we take satisfaction from this achievement, or is it being degraded now?

As they say, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. The Election Commission is very much at centre stage in the system of liberty we have. It has to make efforts eternally, to be eternally vigilant, because it is always under challenge. I told the Foreign Minister of Denmark when he discussed this that it was very easy to talk about perfect elections when you had a per capita income of $20,000. Try even attempting it when you have a per capita income of $300. India has been doing it. That is an achievement that demands recognition. My word does not constitute a test of fairness, but facts do. In every election, Prime Ministers, Ministers and Members of Parliament are overthrown. We have done a study of 11 past Parliaments and found that the probability of the re-election of a Member of Parliament was just one in four. It can't happen in countries where 99.9 per cent is the popularity of the President.

In a larger sense, democracy in a poor country can never be entirely perfect, because the system is always under challenge. I call the period of Jawaharlal Nehru an imperial democracy. He was a great hero and there was hardly any opposition to him; in fact he was trying to create it. So elections were cool exercises, carried out in an almost casual way. With all respect to my predecessors, and I say this as a civil servant of 40 years' standing, they didn't have to sweat it out. They would have an election and then it was scotch and bridge for the next five years. I am sweating more in this job than I ever did in any of my civil service jobs. We have elections after elections. Our polity is made up, as V.S. Naipaul described it, of a million mutinies. East and west, north and south, rich and poor, religion... there are a million concerns. All sub-groups are now standing up, as they indeed should. I support that tremendously as an individual. They want not just a share of the cake, but the whole cake.

So the Commission has a terribly onerous duty, and we have to work all the time. That is why I keep appealing to political parties to do their duty. If they have faith in the democratic system, which they must if they are not themselves to be pushed off the cricket pitch one day, then lots of things have to be done. They have to be serious about electoral reforms.

What would be the priorities on this front?

N. RAM
Chief Election Commissioner M.S. Gill during the interview at the Chepauk stadium in Chennai on January 31.

I'll give you one example which I have been speaking about. The Constitution says that Parliament shall make such arrangements as it sees fit for delimitation after each Census. India is one of the few proud developing countries that are able to carry out one. Pakistan has not been able to do it; neither has Nigeria. I salute those in India who have carried out the Census, and will do so again in the year 2000.

There are two jobs in delimitation. One is to increase or decrease the seat entitlement of a State on the basis of its population. The second is to balance the size of constituencies. One concern, which is dear to me as a person concerned with development, is population. Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have done great work in family planning. This is terribly important. While we celebrate 50 years of Independence, we cannot celebrate the fact that we have made a population of 30 crores into 100 crores in the same period, and that just half of it is literate. These are matters of concern for all Indians. Now, in the 1970s Parliament decided that it would not touch delimitation because, and I agree with this, you cannot reward those who recklessly increase population.

The Election Commission has proposed that while the increase and decrease of representation should continue to be blocked, forever if need be, the second job of balancing constituencies cannot continue to be neglected. Let me explain. Delhi has the Outer Delhi Lok Sabha seat with 28 lakh voters, and Chandni Chowk with less than four lakh voters. Is the worth of a citizen in Outer Delhi villages a sixth of that of one in Chandni Chowk's bazaars? No. There are Outer Delhis and Chandni Chowks in Chennai and Mumbai as well. This is unconstitutional, and someone can challenge it in court. I believe it is the Commission's duty to do something about it, but we don't have the powers. I believe it is Parliament's duty to correct and balance such perversions.

Second, I do not believe it is either necessary or constitutional to have delimitation commissions of retired persons to deal with these issues. The Election Commission of India is the correct body to deal with this. If the Constitution mandates that the Election Commi-ssion shall manage and supervise elections, how can it not allow us to ensure that we have constituencies with balanced numbers of voters? This has to be left to the Commission. I appeal to Parliament to give us the authority to do this within such broad directions as it may see fit, particularly since the Election Comm-ission is now a three-member body like a court. We have asked for it, but if they block or reject the proposal, they will be doing great damage.

Parliament has also been less than enthusiastic about your proposals to remove criminals from the electoral theatre.

The entry of criminals into politics is something that concerns everybody: the press, the people and even politicians themselves. I will first clarify that it is not a national phenomenon, as the foreign press sometimes represents it to be. It is pockets, but sadly those pockets are like cancer. Like a cancer, these pockets have to be eliminated. Otherwise our polity cannot stand.

Today, we have Section 8 in the Representation of the People Act, which has a list of offences ranging from sati to vote manipulation to grave crimes. If you are found guilty of having committed any of these, you can be debarred from standing for election and from voting for up to six years. The Commission, I must say, never really focussed on this in the past. The view taken was that even if you were found guilty of any of these offences by the court but you went in appeal, you could participate in elections until there was no further redress available to you. This was a mistake, and is not acceptable to this Commission. Because our appeals process generally takes not one lifetime but two, there are a couple of hundred appeals pending in the High Courts and even in the Supreme Court. As Ghalib wrote: I do believe, beloved, that you will not delay in coming, but I will be ashes before you have dressed your hair in a nice bun!

We read the Supreme Court judgments on the issue and are convinced that the existing system is not correct. If you are convicted for interfering maliciously and criminally with India's democratic structure, you must be blocked from elections. Your appeal and so on are fine, but that is a separate issue. We have begun to apply this thinking. We have even put in an affidavit requirement for all candidates, and I am glad to salute the politicians from successive Prime Ministers downwards who have respected it. This is the strength of Indian democracy, not the greatness of the Election Commission. In Madhya Pradesh, a candidate was barred from standing for election on the basis of his affidavit.

So, what law we have, we are applying. Now we have gone further and made a historic proposition to all parties after grave consideration of the issues at stake. What we are saying is that even the first conviction, especially of dadas, takes far too long. Our proposition is that if charges are framed against you by a judge or a magistrate which could lead to five years' imprisonment, that should be good enough to block. Parliaments and Assemblies are sacred national spaces. While we know you are innocent until proven guilty, the Supreme Court has laid down a doctrine of reasonable restriction. Our proposal falls within that. Your fundamental rights can be checked to a certain extent to preserve the Indian state itself.

Last year, Parliament passed a solemn resolution to put electoral reforms at the top of the agenda. Kindly recall that. I appeal to them to pass our proposal quickly and unanimously. Otherwise the cancer will spread. You are not providing the Election Commission, as you are bound by the Constitution to do. You are somehow leaving us to take up arms against a set of misfortunes, and somehow vanquish them. All parties in Opposition demand the moon from the Commission at election time. But once in Parliament, they do not show the same enthusiasm. We wait with bated breath for them to act.

Another idea political parties seem less than enthusiastic about is your suggestion that Chief Ministers resign before elections are held.

At election time, every party, without exception, complains about misuse of authority by State governments to distort the mandate. Typically, the complaints relate to intimidation by criminals, booth-capturing, ballot-box-stuffing and so on. Now, I've been thinking about this and it leads me to a simple conclusion. Abuses of power could only be designed to aid the ruling party. I often get complaints by party A against party B where B is in power, and by B against A where A is in power. It's as simple as that, and all parties know it.

Frankly, the mother of all election reforms would be to transform the situation at the State level, where the cutting edge of power is: the Superintendents of Police, the Collectors, and so on. This could be done during both Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. After all, the civil services and the police do not abuse power for the heck of it, but to keep someone in power happy. There is a solution to that. When an election is announced by us, and that is about two months before a five-year term comes to an end, the State government should automatically disappear. This will not really impinge on anybody's five-year term, since the last six months of that term in any case belong to the Election Commission. We can announce elections at any time during that period. There should be Governor's Rule from this time on, allowing the Election Commission to monitor the elections closely through Central nominees. If Governors are not appointed fairly, a composite selection mechanism can be set up, perhaps like that for the Central Vigilance Commission.

Fundamentally, I believe we have clung to British ideas of how elections should be managed even where they are wholly inappropriate. We do not have a British society, economic system or political culture. If my proposals are accepted, you will find the bureaucracy and the police behave themselves, that Governors are impartial, and that 80 per cent of our election-related problems disappear. It is as simple as that.

I am aware of the casual reactions of some of the political parties to my suggestions. To them, I have two things to say. First, I listen with all respect to what they say. I call all-party meetings regularly. I think I am also entitled to the courtesy from the major political parties of at least a reasoned rejection of my proposals, so the country can know why they think what I am suggesting is wrong. Put your arguments on the table. Nobody can have a monopoly on visualising how India ought to be.

On other issues, Parliament does seem to be listening. The Indrajit Gupta Committee's recommendation on state funding for elections seems to endorse many proposals made by the Election Commission.

You asked me earlier what the three-member Commission's achievements were. I do not believe that independence requires a perpetually sustained hostility with other organs of the state. In fact, I am convinced that the Constitution can only be made to work through constant dialogue between high organs of the state. Dialogue does not detract from anybody's independence. The Election Commi-ssion is linked by an umbilical cord to the political system, and I have high regard for the entire political spectrum. I do not condemn political parties as the press sometimes tends to. For 70-80 years, political workers of all parties, from the Marxists to the Bharatiya Janata Party, from the Congress to the Akali Dal, have walked the dusty roads of India educating people on our polity. Most of them will never even achieve block-level office. I spare a thought for them.

State funding, I endorse. I have been saying only one thing, that is, we must be careful and cautious. Money that is given must be accounted for. This Commission made history when it said that Doordarshan and All India Radio were not the property of any party but belonged to the people. We first ensured what you might describe as negative fairness. We blocked the broadcast of news slanted in favour of somebody or the other at election time. Then, we set out to use this national resource positively. In last year's Lok Sabha elections, we gave out 122 hours of prime time, worth between Rs. 50 crores and Rs. 60 crores, according to a formula made by the Election Commission and agreed to by all political parties. That was state funding, and we started it. Again, during the recent elections to four State Assemblies, we gave out time. In fact, some parties told me that they could not find enough people to talk during their allotted broadcast time. If politicians can't be found to talk, that's a joke!

On the limited question of funding, the Indrajit Gupta Committee has come out with proposals which we support entirely. Political parties, particularly poorer ones who are perhaps more noble and therefore don't get money, need offices, phones, diesel for vehicles, and so on. I would even go further, and we should do as the United States Senate does, and make funds available for Members of Parliament to hire competent research and secretarial staff. If Senators give excellent, well-researched speeches, it is because they have quality researchers, often the brightest young graduates from universities, and excellent library facilities at their disposal. Members of Parliament are routinely bamboozled by bureaucrats who frame legislation, and often can't react sensibly to what is put before them. We get poor debate and poor law. Perhaps some will start off by hiring their cousins, but they will realise the value of the facility made available to them.

But while giving all this, one issue has been skirted. The Representation of the People Act imposes limits on a candidate's election expenses and mandates that accounts must be filed within 30 days. The Supreme Court even compelled parties to file accounts. In fact one of our quiet reforms has been to tighten the pro forma for filing accounts to prevent any malpractice. But the major lacuna which has not been addressed, despite repeated Supreme Court interventions, is that the Act has a proviso that allows your party and friends to spend as much as they want without accounting for it. As the Supreme Court has pointed out, this renders the whole restriction on spending useless. The (Indrajit) Gupta Committee sadly split on this issue and has left matters where they are.

Loudspeakers and diesel are petty issues. The hard questions have to be addressed.

Such questions seem to exist through our neighbourhood in South Asia. The Supreme Court in Sri Lanka recently gave a judgment, which as we understand it finds it impermissible for the President to use her emergency powers to put off Provincial Council elections. Secondly, it enlarges the autonomy of the Commissioner of Elections of Sri Lanka. You have had interactions with other Election Commissions in this region. Could you tell us something about it?

The Indian system of elections, with an independent, visibly neutral Election Commission and its workable relationship with parties committed to a strong democracy, is having a powerful impact on our neighbours, and even as far afield as South Africa. Three years ago, we had the first meeting of the Election Commissions of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. That proved very useful. Last year, when I visited Nepal, there was tremendous interest in our 50-year experience. The same applies to Sri Lanka, although I don't know much about it. With their 90 per cent literacy, there is bound to be pressure for an autonomous Election Commission. Just last night I had a call from a major South African newspaper after their Election Commissioner resigned because he was dissatisfied with the level of autonomy. They wanted to know how we cope with these things, and why we are doing so well. At least in this area, we are an example to the world.

Not only did they have many things to ask me; we learnt many things. I can tell you of one tremendous reform we have managed to put through Parliament, which we picked up there. In India byelections could be held, if I may say so, at the whimsical pleasure of the Election Commission. In lots of constituencies, they were not held for years! This was an abuse, for my formulation is that no segment of the Indian people should be left unrepresented for any length of time. But this used to happen. I found that both Bangladesh and Pakistan had a 90-day limit for elections to be held after the death or resignation or whatever of a sitting representative. You can't keep a seat unrepresented because some ruling party would lose an election there. We now have a six-month limit, which is fine by us because that is the outer limit the Election Commission operates on in any case. So we also learnt from these regional interactions.

Finally, you will be conducting nine elections through 1999. These will take place in a communally surcharged atmosphere. The criminal law appears to be sensitive to the mixing of religion and politics, and indeed the Supreme Court has expressly stated that this is impermissible. What intervention can the Election Commission make on this front?

I have often said that the objective of elections is to join people's minds, not to break their heads. The whole idea is to discover what the Indian people want, in a calm and harmonious manner. If some of us get less response than we would like from the Indian people, then we must change our policies and approach them in all humility again for their support. That is the way this whole game is made, and the way it must be played.

There is a second proposition that I find increasingly true as I get older. Indians have the highest GLP in the world: gross laws per person. And that's excluding the books and books of sub-regulations our learned clerks make. We have abolished sati, we have abolished dowry, we have abolished every abuse of everything in our polity and our social life. On the ground, there is a lot lacking. There are enough laws to deal with our problems. What is lacking is the will to apply them. The instruments that are to apply the laws have been blunted. I make no exceptions, none at all.

You might say the Commission should abolish it. The Commission will certainly do what it can, given the totality of its powers and resources. But you must understand that the ability to challenge things is a composite duty of the state, society, and the composite political system. It is pointless to point a finger at any one institution and say, "You do it." Or to say that if you haven't done it, you alone are at fault. It is far more complex than that. But I am very concerned, and I believe everyone else should be very concerned as well. A vote is the best way of choosing a government, because we've seen the alternatives on offer and their fate. But because the vote leads to power, means are used to distort their outcome. If we persist in doing this, it will destroy the very basis of the democracy we all claim to defend. And that will be horrendous.