Justice? Or, yet another Green Light to Modi and Gyanesh Kumar?
The Modi government and the Election Commission are partners in committing electoral fraud. Indeed, the popular perception is that the Supreme Court of India is an accomplice in their illegitimate acts.
By NR Mohanty in Delhi
On Gandhi Jayanti Day, the Cockroach Janata Party announced that it would stage a peaceful protest at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on October 10, if Gyanesh Kumar, the Chief Election Commissioner, did not resign by then over the massive irregularities committed by him, as charged by the two Election Commissioners. The government’s response was cowardly: it cancelled more than 200 trains and closed 57 nearby metro stations so that the CJP supporters could not reach the protest site.
The irony is that in spite of all these measures, the government was still running scared.
It stationed more than 40,000 police and paramilitary forces to hold back the protesters; it suspended the Internet in the area; it arrested the three CJP leaders inside the aircraft soon after their plane touched down at Delhi airport on October 10. But nothing worked; hundreds of student and youth activists congregated at Jantar Mantar, thousands of them travelled on goods trains from distant towns and villages, while others made it by walking long distances on railway tracks, and using all kinds of road transport.
They were then, yet again, brutally assaulted by the security forces and the saffron goons deployed by them. The official explanation for this crackdown was that the CJP had not sought permission from Delhi police for the protest!
The CJP took this charge seriously and decided to put the ball in the police’s court next time. On October 13, it submitted a request to Delhi police asking it to specify the earliest possible day on which a protest could be organised at Jantar Mantar, the official protest site. Just a few hours after this submission of request, the police came out with a notification saying that Jantar Mantar was no longer available to stage protests.
This is evidence that the Modi government is clearly on the backfoot. The swelling public anger is closing in around it.
This authoritarian revgime has come to realise that the only way it could survive in office was by resorting to more and more strong-arm methods. No wonder, it has gone out of the way to protect Gyanesh Kumar; since without him or someone like him at the helm to manipulate the elections, the Modi regime’s electoral prospects would be bleak. It can only hope that fatigue sets in in the opposition camp before long and things return to as usual sooner than later!
The opposition parties, on their part, are hoping against hope that the judiciary would not allow Indian democracy to fall by the wayside. That’s why they went on a long procession to petition the Supreme Court to take cognisance of the acts of omission and commission of Gyanesh Kumar. Yes, the Supreme Court of India is the last constitutional frontier to defend the guardrails of democracy. But, going by its conduct in the last decade or so, it’s difficult to surmise that the apex court would live up to the expectations of the opposition parties and resolutely protect India’s constitutional edifice!
Undoubtedly, there are a few judges in the Supreme Court for whom constitutional imperatives are paramount. But, as per the current trend, such conscientious judges don’t seem to be part of the benches that decide crucial matters of national importance. Instead, the apparently compromised judges seem to be ruling the roost.
That’s why, a widespread impression seems to be gaining ground across the country that our higher judiciary has become the ‘Executive’s Court’ — a court that exists only to lend legal cover to the illegal actions of the Executive and its aligned institutions.
The Election Commission is one such institution which enjoys autonomous constitutional status, but, which, unfortunately, has turned into a front organisation of the Modi regime under Gyanesh Kumar. Soon after taking over as the Chief Election Commissioner, Kumar set in motion the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar, that too, just weeks before the assembly election there. The chaos that followed with the illegal alteration of the statutory Form 6 of the Representation of the People’s Act resulted in large-scale disenfranchisement of genuine voters. But the Supreme Court of India looked the other way making the bland observation that it trusted the Election Commission to take legitimate actions to conduct free and fair elections!
Similarly, just before the West Bengal assembly elections, the tweak in the technical software of the Election Commission gave rise to a strange outcome in which the names of millions of voters were deleted on grounds of ‘logical discrepancy’. While some 30 lakh voters rued their fate and sat back in despair, as their daily battle for survival was their bigger concern, a similar number of affected voters appealed against the deletion of their names.
The matter went to the Supreme Court of India. The bench led by CJI Surya Kant set up appellate tribunals but, given the paucity of time, tribunals could decide only about one lakh such cases before the elections. Strikingly, the tribunals' decisions revealed that 93% of the voters whose names were deleted by the Election Commission through the SIR process were genuine.
Clearly, they had been struck off the rolls due to either sheer malafide intent or gross negligence/incompetence of the Election Commission. While the cases of more than 27 lakh voters were pending — most of whom would have been eligible to vote given the trend — surely, they ought to have been allowed to exercise their franchise during the assembly elections.
However, the CJI-led bench of the Supreme Court again looked the other way. In fact, Justice Joymalya Bagchi of the same bench made an astounding remark that the disputed voters could exercise their right in the next election!
Mind you, as per the current pace, it would take the tribunals at least 12 years to adjudicate on the appeals; in that case, some excluded voters would have to wait for the next three elections before they could vote!
Indeed, it’s expected of the top judiciary to intervene even if the rights of a single voter were denied; but when the mass disenfranchisement of 27 lakh voters were on the cards, a senior Supreme Court judge’s cavalier remark only goes to show the abyss the respected institution of judiciary has sunk to justify the actions of the Executive and its aligned institutions!
As a matter of fact, OP Rawat, a former Chief Election Commissioner, appointed by the Modi government itself, has gone on record to say that the Supreme Court of India legitimised a patently illegal act of the Election Commission by not allowing the 27 lakh voters under adjudication to exercise their voting rights. Rawat refers to the explicit provisions of the Representation of the People’s Act that categorically state that until the revised electoral rolls are satisfactorily completed, the old, published electoral rolls must be used in the ensuing elections.
Therefore, it was glaringly illegal for the Election Commission to ignore that provision and foist its incomplete and disputed electoral rolls on the voters; more seriously, it was unpardonable that the Supreme Court of India provided a cover for this illegal act of the Election Commission!
Can you expect justice now from the same bench which has been an accomplice to the illegal acts of the Commission over the last 18 months?
Some have found renewed hope with the CJI-led bench saying last week that it had not specifically approved the alternations of the Form 6 during its verdict on Bihar SIR process; similarly, it has said that it would look into ways through which the appeal cases in West Bengal could be expeditiously resolved.
However, these are mere optics, and this is the perception of a large section of Indian citizens, including thousands of Gen Z peacefully protesting on the streets all over India. You cannot reasonably expect justice from compromised Justices like Suryakant and Bagchi; they may sometimes make nice noises but those seem nothing more than hollow words.
In the final count, where it matters, going by their recent track record, rest assured, these judges might as welll give a green light to what the Executive and its aligned institutions want them to do!
Nalini Ranjan (NR) Mohanty is a seasoned journalist, commentator and academic. He is former Resident Editor, Hindustan Times and The Times of India (Patna Edition) and former Director, Jagran Institute of Management and Mass Communication (JIMMC).
All images courtesy of Instgram