CEC's antics continue

To start with the CEC embarked upon making a completely new voters list when there was no need for that. And when the High Court put an embargo on it, he in clear defiance of its dictates, continued with the process, incurring, by some reports, a loss of almost 60 crores to the public exchequer.

And he has been continuing with his irresponsible acts even after the Supreme Court confirmed the order of the High Court to update the voter's list on the basis of the one used in 2001 elections. It took him seven days to convene a meeting of his staff, after the EC appeal was dismissed by the Supreme Court, to discuss his next course of action and as if deliberately to compound the issue, withheld initiating any further action on the excuse that the certified copy of the verdict had not reached the EC. And once that was received he came up with the idea of the prospective voters going to the election commission offices to get enrolled. His latest move is to send his staff to the villages, again a climb down from his earlier position, but the voters would still have to go to the EC staff instead of the vice versa.

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A clear pattern has emerged from the EC's actions of the last several months. He takes a very rigid stance to start with, irrationally, only to relent halfheartedly. On every position he had taken he backtracked but assumed a defiant tone thereafter as if daring the system. And although in his latest move he has again caved in partly by agreeing to send his staff to the village level, he remains defiant in his stance of not going from house to house to enroll voters.

We feel that the CEC has failed to comprehend a very vital and essential truth, something that even a puerile mind would not miss. And that is, it is the EC's bounden responsibility to have all the eligible voters in the country enrolled. It is the EC's responsibility to provide all facilities that would assist the voters to exercise their franchise and would ensure a free and fair election. We ask, does the EC want that a sizeable segment of the eligible voters are deprived of their right to cast their vote? The CEC's modus of updating the voter's list will ensure exactly that.

When will the CEC and his two commissioners give up?