In the khaki hills above Udaipur where dirt poor Adivasis eke out an existence, the only thing they ask of their new Chief Minister is water. Driving through the parliamentary constituency of Salumbar, Vasundhara Raje is told at roadside meetings and election rallies that more than half the hand pumps in Salumbar have dried up. She promises there will be relief immediately after the election. When I ask innocently why she cannot take urgent action since urgency seems to be required she says with frustration, ‘‘Because no new water projects have been allowed by the Election Commission since the code of conduct came into operation on the 29th of March. This is a problem I inherited and there are limits to what we could achieve in two months.’’An engineering college in Maharashtra spent two years getting government permission to appoint new faculty and a date for interviews was set long before the election was announced. A thousand applicants from far and near were scheduled to arrive on an appointed date last month and guess what? They had to be turned away at the last minute because new appointments, and recruitment in general, are considered a violation of the code of conduct.Big infrastructure projects are usually built by governments, so for the past two months all work on new projects and all arbitration concerning old ones has been halted. Construction on roads, dams, ports and other infrastructure projects is banned even in cases where the government awarded the work before the election was announced. The restrictions are so debilitating that a CEO in Mumbai considered worth mentioning in his annual report the absurdity of a country, in a hurry to become an economic superpower, halting economic activity for two months at the whim of an Election Commissioner.What is it about Nirvachan Sadan that gives even the most faceless of faceless officials instant delusions of power? It’s hard to think of anyone more faceless than our current Chief Election Commissioner, Shri T S Krishnamurthy. He began his years in government in the Revenue Service and had a career so undistinguished as to have been virtually invisible for most of it. Yet no sooner did he get his first chance to perform before the cameras than he acquired an almost prime ministerial air of authority.Election Commission officials are not meant to have policing powers but Krishnamurthy appears to think they do, so someone carrying Rs 50 lakhs was arrested at Bhubaneswar airport, not long ago, because the Election Commission thought he might be carrying money for a candidate.If the Election Commission had succeeded in controlling election expenses, this sort of hyper-activity might have the support of this column but everyone knows that those who can afford to are spending as much as a crore of rupees on a single parliamentary constituency, more than three times the limit. Everyone also knows that this kind of money usually comes from big business and is, more often than not, black.There is much else the Election Commission has failed to control. Criminals continue to contest with the full backing of major political parties and nobody has so far been able to do anything about this? In Bihar booth-capturing has grown from a cottage industry into a major enterprise and no longer is there any shame associated with it. While switching channels last week, I came upon a programme, on NDTV I think, in which masked men spoke proudly of their occupation and their dreams. Waving their guns about and speaking through their masks they said their services were available to any political party that could afford them. When the reporter asked what they would like to do eventually, one said, ‘‘Well, eventually we would like to enter politics ourselves.’’ Undoubtedly, the Election Commission will stand by helplessly when this happens.It was, we were told, to have a truly ‘‘free and fair’’ polling that this general election was stretched out over two months. Well, has it been free and fair in Bihar? Besides, if the whole of India could vote on a single day in elections past what has gone so wrong that this cannot happen any more. Could it be that our Chief Election Commissioners, afflicted as they all seem to be by Seshanitis, like to stretch out their moment in the sun for as long as possible? Could it be that like T N Seshan and M S Gill before him, Krishnamurthy will also seek a political career in his retirement years?M S Gill has just become a Rajya Sabha MP from the Congress Party and Seshan was given a Congress ticket, in an earlier election, to contest against L K Advani. Surely those who occupy high constitutional positions should be prevented from joining a political party. Maybe we need a code of conduct for Election Commissioners.Meanwhile, as you may have noticed, thousands of Indians across the country have complained about their names being wrongly removed from electoral rolls. If the Chief Election Commissioner were not so busy interfering in governance and politics, he might find time to consider the sort of administrative reforms required in Nirvachan Sadan to at least make electoral rolls up to date.To end on a personal note may I say that I had my picture taken for a voter identity card nearly ten years ago and have heard nothing since. If I am not allowed to vote tomorrow, Krishnamurthy will be hearing from me.— Write to tavleensingh@expressindia.com
