No state poll thrall for the nation
The Election Commission of India (EC) has sounded the bugle for polls in five states this year, whose results would have a bearing on national politics. These are Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest and politically most significant state, with 403 seats, Punjab with 117, Uttarakhand with 70, Manipur with 60 and tiny Goa with 40.
UP’s 200 million population and 138.5 million voters — of every conceivable caste, religion and ethnicity — make for complex politics. Administering polls is a huge logistical exercise, so UP will vote in seven phases between February 11 and March 8. Goa and Punjab are easier and will vote in one phase on February 4; so will Uttarakhand on February 15.
Manipur is heavily militarised, rocked recently by riots and its hills are tough terrain. So, polls have been split into two phases. Results will be out on March 11. The Model Code of Conduct has come into force. Many think this means that the Centre should postpone its Budget or strip it of schemes and measures that might be deemed to be influencing voter behaviour in the poll-bound states.
This ignores the essential difference between the two layers of the federal polity. The Centre should go about Budgetmaking as usual, taking care, however, to refrain from announcing schemes specific to poll-bound states.
The EC has developed a formidable reputation for conducting free and fair polls in this vast, raucous nation. Apart from introducing electronic voting machines, it now videotapes campaigns, monitors polling booths real time, issues photo IDs to each voter and distributes voting slips to each registered voter.
Its crackdown on so-called ‘paid news’ has had limited impact; its poll spending caps are regularly violated, with candidates of almost every party finding ingenuous means to spend way over prescribed limits.
It will monitor local TV stations to check for objectionable content. This time, EC has promised to monitor social media as well, and punish offenders. Given the dispersed, anonymous vastness of social media, this will be a challenge, but we shall be ecstatic if the commission succeeds.
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