TAKING A CALL: Krishnamurthy

The Election Commission's (EC) tasks are many but monitoring the prices of petroleum products is certainly not one of them. About a fortnight ago, it did something which, by no stretch of imagination, was related to its primary responsibility of ensuring free and fair elections in the country. It forwarded to the secretary, Ministry of Petroleum, a letter of complaint from a concerned citizen who wanted to know why the prices of petrol and diesel had not been hiked since December 31, 2003. The mandarins in the ministry must have, no doubt, been amused but since the request had come from a constitutional authority, a reply was duly despatched. The administered pricing mechanism on petrol and diesel had been dismantled as early as April 2002. Since then, as Petroleum Secretary B.K. Chaturvedi told the media, "prices are not fixed by the Government but by the oil companies."

The story is bizarre enough to be dubbed apocryphal but when newspapers and TV channels headlined the EC's move, it was obvious that those in charge of running the election machinery in the world's largest democracy had got their priorities all mixed up.

It wasn't always like this. Till about a decade ago, the CEC was a faceless bureaucrat, rarely heard and seen rarer still. But the image acquired a makeover sometime during the early 1990s when T.N. Seshan metamorphosed from a watchdog into a bulldog.

There are few exercises as arduous as conducting parliamentary elections in India. A total of 543 constituencies, probably 10 times as many candidates, 670 million voters, lakhs of polling booths-the list is long. The logistical nightmare that it is, the EC would hardly be expected to have the time or the inclination to monitor the effect of tax collection figures on voting patterns or, for that matter, dwell over a single lotus in full bloom in a pond maintained by the Archaeological Department in Nandurbar district of Maharashtra which was cited by the local election officer as a violation of the model code of conduct since the lotus also happens to be the BJP's symbol. Last week, it also took to task four IPS officers who had gone to receive L.K. Advani at Bhopal. The fact is that the deputy prime minister is in the Z-plus risk category and is briefed by local officers.

The question is not so much whether the EC was right or wrong but whether it has its priorities right. Sceptics cannot be faulted if they believe that it is pandering to cheap gimmicks aimed at publicity rather than tackling pressing issues.

The voters' list, for example. When the voting is over in May, the EC would have conducted India's first paperless election as electronic voting machines are to be used in all constituencies. But despite this, historical hiccups surfaced: cricketer Irfan Pathan, industrialist Adi Godrej, writer Shobhaa De and actors Anupam Kher and Poonam Dhillon were among the lakhs whose names didn't even figure in the voters' list. During the Delhi assembly elections held in November last year, names of 5,000 voters-including 150 AICC staffers-were missing from the rolls in Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit's Gole Market constituency. Remedial measures are still to be initiated by the EC.

The Commission's priorities also came in for attack from the judiciary last week when the Patna High Court issued notices to the EC, the Union and state governments asking them to lock up undertrials like Rashtriya Janata Dal's Mohammed Shahabuddin, Pappu Yadav and don Rajan Tiwari who were roaming around free in the name of fighting elections. "Jail was the right place for these people," the judges said.

Instead, what passes for electoral reforms make little difference either to the candidates or the public. Like last week the EC allowed candidate's hoardings on city buses, bus stands, and wherever else the civic bodies give out sites for advertisements.

The problem, of late, is that the commission has been hyperactive. Seshan's crackdown on politicians made him a middle-class hero. His successors M.S. Gill, J.M. Lyngdoh and G.V.G. Krishnamurthy cracked the whip on the political class and revelled in the limelight. So convinced was Seshan of his iconic status that he contested against Advani in Gandhinagar in 1999. He lost miserably. Says Gill, now a Congress Rajya Sabha member: "I am a free citizen and master of my will."

But as E-2004 has shown, the will of the CEC is never to be taken lightly.

-with Ramesh Vinayak