To be T.N. Seshan's successor as the Chief Election Commissioneror anywhere, for that matteris a tough job. The man who ruled the Election Commission like a dictator and boasted of having politicians for breakfast had created a reputation that was hard to maintain or even attempt.Yet, a year since he took over, Chief Election Commissioner Manohar Singh Gill has come into his own. He has clearly cast off the shadow of his predecessor and with quiet firmness has ensconced himself in the CEC's saddle.Seshan had radically changed the profile of the constitutional body. The EC had metamorphosed under him into an institution in its own right, uncompromisingly committed to democratic procedures and institutions in the country.But for all Seshan's important efforts in empowering the Election Commission, his near-despotic ways and his whimsical functioning threatened to undermine that very institution, as the Commission began to attract increasing controversy.The appointment of Gill and G.V.G. Krishnamurty as Election Commissioners with equal powers and status as the CEC in October 1993 was essentially a move to curb Seshan's arbitrariness. Unfortunately, it brought out the more disagreeable aspects of Seshan's personality.The situation was made worse by the spat between the Commissioners being conducted in full public view. But the test that Seshan subjected both Gill and Krishnamurty to, ultimately helped to show their mettle. Gill's calculatedly careful and low-profile response won the day.But the same dovish approach drew criticism as well. When Gill was appointed CEC, his critics wondered if the Commission's image as a tough taskmaster laying down the law and making recalcitrant political parties toe the line would take a beating. A year in office and Gill has proved his detractors wrong.The past year has witnessed in-house elections in all the political parties except the Shiv Sena. Even the Congress was forced to hold its party elections. When the Congress unilaterally decided to delay party polls, the Commission, at the risk of being accused of being soft on the Congress, gave them permission to carry out the exercise in their own time but never let them forget who was calling the shots.The Presidential elections saw Nirvachan Sadan attract some flak for increasing the number of proposers and seconders for every candidate by 50 each. This move was seen in some quarters as going against the spirit of democracy as it killed the chances of candidates other than those fielded by political groups to participate in the fray.But the EC's logic that the change in criteria was aimed at keeping non-serious candidates out was upheld when only two serious candidates, K.R. Narayanan and Seshan, were left in the race.Gill has always maintained that he is a team man. Here a comparison with Seshan would be in order. Unlike the treatment that Krishnamurty and Gill had endured under Seshan, Gill was very vocal about speeding up the appointment of the third member of the EC, J.M. Lyndoh.He insisted that only a full complement of three members could enable the Commission to function properly. This approach seems to have paid dividends. It has helped the EC crack down on the criminalisation of politics. Gill and Krishnamurty have jointly launched a campaign to clean up the election stables, and the by-elections held so far have had potential candidates signing affidavits swearing that their past is without blemish.Another change that the Commission is pushing, but without much success, is the move to increase the expenditure limit for parliamentary and assembly elections. The current level of Rs 4.5 lakh per parliamentary constituency is ``unrealistic'', Gill feels, adding that it is unreasonable to expect a candidate covering a constituency with over 15 lakh voters to be governed by this limit.Yet another scheme which has achieved mixed results is that of issuing voter identity cards. Started with enormous fanfare during the Seshan tenure, the backlog in issuing ID cards, also inherited from Seshan's days in Nirvachan Sadan, continues. So far some 400 million ID cards have been issued, but an additional 230 million persons are still without cards.Gill is familiar with the ways of government and therefore could assume the CEC's chair without much problem. An IAS officer of the 1958 batch, he has served as an officer in different capacities in a career spanning over three decades.Ask this father of three daughter about his pet interests, and pat comes the reply: ``Development''. His years in Punjab, as Development Commissioner saw the introduction of innovative schemes in the areas of agriculture, direct marketing by farmers and the setting up of Apni Mandis, or farmers' cooperatives to cut out the middlemen.Gill claims that he is a farmer at heart and the years of pushing bureaucratic files have not killed this basic instinct. Though he has been in Delhi for the last nine years, he yearns to go back to the land, far from the dust and heat of the city and the madding crowds.Unfortunately, he will have to put these yearnings on hold as the heat and dust of another election draws closer. It's not an easy task to control an army of 45 lakh government servants and school teachers assigned to over nine lakh polling stations and ensuring that 630 million people cast their votes.``Elections are a dal-roti issue for the people of India. You cannot have a good government if you don't have a productive Parliament,'' says Gill, emphasising the need for free and fair polls. But this is more easily said than done.Booth-capturing and preventing people from exercising their franchise are not exactly a thing of the past and the state machinery and a handful of electoral officers are no match for the goon squads of political bigwigs in regions like Bihar, for instance.This will be the first general elections for the entire country conducted by Gill as CEC, since the last polls were seen largely as a Seshan show.Two months from now, Gill and his team will be out to prove that they are equal to the mammoth task of conducting the world's largest democratic exercise.
