Physician, heal thyself

There are several institutions of which the country can be justly proud. Important among them is the Election Commission. Its job is to ensure free and fair elections and, in that admittedly difficult task, in an admittedly difficult country, it has succeeded quite spectacularly. Barring the odd mess which is inevitable because of the large numbers of voters and constituencies involved, the country has little to complain about.

That said, it is important to keep in mind an institutional predilection: the tendency to expand jurisdiction and to become obsessed with the exercise of power even as the boundaries of such power are expanded. In the 1970s and 1980s, it was the executive that fell prey to this temptation. Since the 1990s, there has been a tendency to correct for this, indeed over-correct. There have been several instances involving the courts. To a lesser extent, perhaps because it is on a less continuous basis, the same thing has happened with the Election Commission "" which has become decidedly more assertive under a series of assertive chiefs.

To some extent, this was a necessary corrective, but there has been over-correction as well. In the effort to ensure free and fair elections, the Commission has not only tended to stretch out elections over periods that are far longer than warranted, there has also been a tendency to delay inordinately the counting of votes. The latest example is the Gujarat assembly elections.

The election was conducted over 13 days, which is at least a week too long. And the results will be announced only today, a week after polling closed. The result is that Gujarat has been under the Election Commission's mandate for far longer than is necessary.

Contrast this with another election that was held last week: the presidential election in South Korea. Around 20 million voted, which is about the same as the number of votes that had to be counted in Gujarat. The technology used was the same, as well. Yet, the result in Korea was known after less than 10 hours. The polling closed at 6 pm and by 4 am the next day, the result had been announced. This, in a country that is a relative newcomer to elections, having become a democracy only in 1990 and therefore without the long years of experience that India's Election Commission has accumulated. So, the Commission does need to ask itself: is it getting everything right?

The usual answer to this question is that if the main charge on the Commission is to ensure free and fair elections, then it should be permitted to do that in the manner it deems fit. While that may be all right as a general proposition, it breaks down if the Commission decides that it is necessary for elections to last for a year in order to make ensure that they are free and fair. It also becomes a problem if voter records are not updated regularly, as is sometimes the case "" so that the Commission is not always ready to conduct a snap poll, should one be called. A third problem is the kind faced by the Commission when there are complaints about violations of its code. In the Gujarat case, the Commission merely issued notices to those complained against and asked for their explanation. The elections are over, but the complaints are still to be dealt with. Surely the Commission should be expected to deliver swifter responses.

Being a Constitutional body, the Commission should be expected to introspect and ask itself if it needs to change in any way. A more system-driven approach would be for it to put out a mission statement, on what the Commission expects to do, and set out some performance parameters on key issues "" to which it can then be held accountable.