Unfortunate that Election Commission in the dock: SY Qureshi

New Delhi: As India goes for sixth and penultimate round of voting, the Election Commission of India (EC) faces severe criticism from political parties, and on social media for being biased. While ECI offered “no comments” to allegations of bias against it, former chief election commissioner S.Y. Qureshi said it is unfortunate that instead of political parties being in dock for violation of Model Code of Conduct (MCC), it is the ECI that is facing the heat.

According to the ECI website, between March 10, 2019  — when the Lok Sabha poll dates were announced — till May 9, 2019, a total  of 501 complaints for violations of MCC were registered. Out of these the ECI has decided on 257 cases while 184 are pending and 60 have been dropped.

The ECI has been laregly facing criticism for going soft on the ruling party and alleged violations of MCC by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. For instance, the ECI came under major criticism when it suspended Karnataka-cadre IAS officer Mr Mohammed Mohsin for searching Mr Modi’s helicopter in Sambalpur in Orissa as part of his election duty.

The ECI defended itself by saying that checking of the PM’s helicopter was not in accordance with the ECI guidelines as SPG protectees are exempt from such checking.  However, the ECI could not explain what was wrong in a random check since Mr Modi was campaigning for his party at that time.
In fact, similar searches were carried out on Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik’s helicopter in Rourkela and Union petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan in Sambalpur by the ECI flying squad.

All ECI officials had to offer was “no comments” to the allegations of bias towards the ruling party. However, former CEC Mr Qureshi felt that such a situation could have been well avoided.

“It is painful to see that the political parties and its leaders are violating the MCC, and instead of they being in the dock, it is the ECI which is at the recivign end,” Mr Qureshi said.

Among the other top cases for which the ECI was criticised was giving a clean chit to Mr Modi’s address to the nation on the issue of A-SAT missile test.

Former election commission officials said that in such circumstances it is usually the officials of the particular department or the scientists would have broken the news instead of PM who is leading his party in the elections and is among the main campaigners.

The main poll body has also been facing flak for giving back-to-back clean chits to Mr Modi for his controversial comments in the rallies and his regualr use of defence forces feat and Balakot air strikes in his election rallies. In one of his rallies held in Chitradurga, Mr Modi had exhorted first-time voters to dedicate their votes for the security forces despite ECI advisories issued on March 9 and March 19 asking political leaders to refrain from using photographs of defence personnel or using their action for political propaganda. The ECI cleanchit to PM came amidst a dissent from one of the Election Commissioners, Mr Ashok Lavasa who had made objections with regard to speeches having references to defence forces and involving communal tone.