Democracy is not voting, it is counting, the gem of truth. Now that the fairness of the election process is being questioned in India, it is in danger. Adding grist to the mill is the government’s recent move to amend Rule 93 of the Election Conduct Rules, 1961 to restrict public access to electronic documents such as CCTV footage, webcasting data and video recordings of candidates during elections.
The Congress has gone to the Supreme Court to test the legality of the amendment, which clearly aims to prevent the misuse of such documents and data. This is an attempt to obfuscate a part of the election process so that in the modern era, ubiquitous CCTV cameras capture everything and add to the veracity of the voting process so that candidates or political parties can confirm if they raise doubts. Rejected for.
Misuse of CCTV camera footage from inside polling stations can compromise voter privacy and such footage can be used to create fake stories through AI technology, which is an apparently flimsy excuse in defense of the changes in the rules. EC said. Controlling the conduct of elections. While there is still no foolproof defense against doctoring videos and fake stories, it is not uncommon to threaten the system of fair and free voting that has evolved over 73 years since 1951 in India.
The government and the EC’s defensive move on the amendment of the rules has apparently asked the Punjab and Haryana High Court to share all documents related to the Haryana assembly elections, including electronic footage, to citizens. The counter-measure is apparently seeking transparency in state elections where the counting process led to wild swings in leads and raised questions about voter turnout percentage, etc.
To be fair, the Indian electoral system has been the fairest in terms of access to polling booths, with nearly two-thirds of the 976 million eligible voters voting in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Passed the qualifying age. Opposition parties may make mistakes by arguing without solid evidence that EVMs may be tampered with, but when they are happy with the results provided by the same EVMs when they win, they give up when they fail to win.
However, there is nothing wrong in the opposition’s claim that there is a great need to make the process more transparent and accountable. Moreover, changing any rules that seem to be working well for decades requires a consensual approach from the Commission as there are no unilateral amendments as is the case now in the case of documents and statistics.
How much effort is needed to find consensus among the 20 or so major national and regional parties and stakeholders such as voters before any changes to basic rules, including access to voting process verification, are made? Remember Joseph Stalin’s saying, possibly apocryphal, “It’s not the people who vote that count, it’s the people who count the votes”. Any desire to count them, to kill transparency, must end if the voting process for the world’s largest electorate is to keep its fair name.