By Sanjay Dubey
One thing can easily be said about the protests taking place in Delhi against the Election Commission and Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar: they are peaceful. People are raising slogans, carrying posters and asking questions. There is no violence, stone-pelting or vandalism that might justify preventing protesters from demonstrating at a place meant precisely for that purpose. Yet they are not being allowed anywhere near Jantar Mantar, let alone permitted to protest there.
Delhi Police detained hundreds of people on October 2. It did the same on October 3. Then, on October 6 and 7, the same happened to Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi and a large number of opposition MPs. Anyone who resisted, including Rahul and Priyanka, was met with Delhi Police’s familiar use of force. Despite this, the protests remained largely non-violent. And yet, short of calling in the army, almost every measure is being taken to prevent them from continuing.
This raises a very simple question: why are questions being asked of the Election Commission being answered through the police?
The police cannot explain why two members of the Election Commission repeatedly recorded written objections to the Commission’s decisions. It cannot explain who changed Form 6, which is used to give people the right to vote, or what consequences that change might have. The police cannot explain why, after judicial officers in West Bengal decided that the names of lakhs of voters should remain on the electoral rolls, the Commission seems determined to have those decisions overturned. Nor can it explain why names are increasingly being added to electoral rolls only through Delhi when, under the law, this is the job of EROs spread across the country. Or why the three members of the Election Commission no longer seem to meet and take decisions together. And how can the police explain what forced, for the first time in the Commission’s history, two Election Commissioners to write to the Cabinet Secretary about the disorder within their own institution?
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