Elections in Bihar

Quoting the author, Election Commissioner N. Gopalaswamy:

"India will be a sham democracy if the very foundation of a democratic polity, namely free and fair elections, are missing from the scene."

And the Bihar assembly elections were a first step in the direction of free and fair elections. The first thing the Election Commission did was to make electronic versions of the electoral rolls. This helped them eliminate duplicates entries. Next they generated lists of households with more than 10-15 members, an unsually high number, and verified these to eliminate the names of dead or migrated members. And the use of Election Photo Id Cards (EPICs) was made compulsory. These together helped eliminate more than 18 lack invalid voters, and added 4 lack valid voters. Armed forces were also stationed to prevent poll booth highjacking, and the polling stations were categorized into safe or sensitive stations as well. Extending the poll to 7 days instead of 4 was also helpful in eliminating pollbooth highacking.

However, there is much more to be done still. The Lok Sabha polling was up to 58%, but the Bihar polling was hardly 46%. One reason for this is suggested to be the absense of any ceilings on party expenditure: thus, money power and muscle power eventually decide who is allowed to vote, and for whom, thus determining the outcome of the elections. But in my opinion, the bigger problem is that the people themselves are irresponsible and do not care too much about who gets in power. The strong stand taken by the Supreme court on poll-related litigation, and the emergence of civil society groups and a proactive media are hoped to solve these issues.