Assembly elections to be announced any time, but no decision on e-voting

With the Assembly election schedule to five states due to be announced any day now, and India in the grips of a surge in Covid cases, the Election Commission of India (ECI) is preparing to reply to a query from the Uttarakhand High Court (HC), which has asked whether virtual campaigning and online voting is possible in the upcoming Assembly elections in the state.
 
The ECI has time till January 12, the next hearing of the case, to respond.
 
On Thursday, the ECI held a meeting with Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan and asked him to arrange to speed up vaccinations. While during previous elections (Bihar – 2020 and West Bengal – 2021), detailed guidelines were issued on how the campaign should be conducted, so far the ECI has issued no guidelines - either on campaigning or voting ahead of Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh (UP), Uttarakhand, Goa, Manipur, and Punjab.

 

Of course, in its defence, the ECI’s writ begins to run only after elections are actually announced and the model code of conduct kicks in.
 
A division Bench of Additional Chief Justice S K Mishra and Justice Alok Kumar Verma in the Uttarakhand HC, however, has gone a step beyond and has asked the poll panel to take a decision on virtual rallies and online voting and inform the court in the next hearing on January 12.
 
“Let the ECI consider issuing appropriate directions prohibiting large public rallies for the ensuing election to the Uttarakhand State Legislative Assembly and take a decision. The ECI shall also consider issuing appropriate directions for campaigning in virtual mode. We also request the ECI to consider virtual voting in future,” the court said on Wednesday.

 
The ECI’s action – and response on January 12 – is crucial, considering an earlier verbal observation by the Madras HC that “your institution is singularly responsible for the second wave of Covid-19. Your officers should be booked on murder charges probably. Were you on another planet when the election rallies were held?" The court's order later that day, however, only said: "At no cost can counting become a catalyst for a further surge.”
 
The court’s observations were hotly contested by the ECI.
 
Former election commissioner S Y Quraishi says: “Since the UP elections are expected to be spread over at least a month in six to seven phases, the polls must begin by February 10. The law requires a poll process of 26 days, which means the notification of the first phase/poll must be issued by January 15. Before the notification, the ECI has a maximum of 21 days at its discretion. This means the election could, or rather should, have been announced on December 25 or soon thereafter. An immediate announcement is imperative, as political parties have made it clear that they will not stop the election rallies unless and until the ECI orders them”.

 
Legal expert and for years, legal advisor to the ECI, S K Mendiratta, explains that the delay in notifying the election is on account of updated electoral rolls. “We cannot leave anyone out (of the electoral rolls). The updated rolls must reflect the situation on January 1, 2022. The rolls routinely come out on January 1. I expect the notification will follow any day now,” he says.
 
However, on online voting, there is consensus that for this round of elections, it is impossible for voters to cast their votes from home. Remote voting – designed for service voters and later envisaged as a way of ensuring migrant workers who are unable to reach home in time to cast their vote are not disenfranchised - is an idea the ECI has been tossing in the air since 2015-16.

 
A multi-disciplinary committee headed by former deputy election commissioner Vinod Zutshi was tasked with finding ways to enable non-resident Indians to cast their vote electronically, but did, however, recommend  that it will not be wise to go in for a full-fledged online voting system right now.
 
But the ECI is not closed to the idea and is awaiting political consensus on the issue. There are many problems with the concept - the biggest being the credibility of the procedure.  The ECI has not given up on it, merely deferred it until there is political agreement on it.