3 states, 21 days

The Election Commission’s announcement that elections in Bihar and Jharkhand will be conducted over three different days, spread virtua...

The Election Commission’s announcement that elections in Bihar and Jharkhand will be conducted over three different days, spread virtually over two and a half weeks, underscores both their precariousness and their importance. The fact that the elections are staggered to this extent should be a cause for serious concern. It is an admission that the security and law and order concerns here are such that they warrant extra precaution. There is no doubt that this region is one of the most intensely politicised ones in the country. And the stakes are very high indeed. The peculiar nexus of strong arm tactics

and politics that exists in Bihar, for instance, makes the task of conducting elections here an unenviable one.

But even if it is granted that conducting elections here is no easy task, the wisdom of spreading out the elections to this extent needs to be questioned. For one thing if we could successfully conduct a general election across the whole country in comparable time, why is it that conducting polls in three states is proving to be such a difficult challenge? Surely, it cannot be argued that the security and other resources to conduct the election over a shorter duration are not available. But, most importantly, governance will, even by Bihar’s standards, come to a standstill for longer than is warranted. Given the importance of the Bihar elections, it is also very likely that important decisions of the Central government will be postponed more than is justified. It will be particularly tragic if the elections cast a shadow over the crucial budget session of Parliament. This scenario is not unlikely in the event that the result is not decisive.

If the EC does indeed have greater apprehensions about the security and logistical situation in Bihar, it ought to be more forthright about what these are. There is a moral value to the simultaneity of elections. The idea is that an elector’s voting behavior should not be influenced by any additional information about how others might have voted. Non-simultaneity discriminates against some voters because it allows some information others do not have. That is why polls are conducted simultaneously and the publishing of exit polls banned in many countries. For practical reasons we have had to compromise with the simultaneity principle. But there is wisdom in keeping this compromise to a minimum. The EC should have done more to ensure that polls within the same state were not spread out over such a long period.