2002 and its Twin Tempests

They showed us copies of rolls supplied to them for the Jammu by-elections which had just concluded. These were quite disgraceful 8212; bulky, unwieldy, smudged and illegible. The opposition parties also complained they mostly got copies of the rolls a day or two before polling, while the party in power secured them much earlier.

The last intensive revision had been done in 1988 and the electoral rolls consisted of the 1988 mother roll and 14 supplementary rolls, one for each of the annual summary revisions. So when copies were given to the opposition parties, some of the supplementary rolls were conveniently withheld 8230;

It was easy to promise the electoral rolls would be rectified though at that point in time no one knew how to computerise them. We were also forthcoming on the other requests, barring identity cards. The state had been too turbulent for identity cards to be generated offline or online. In other words, one could not expect voters tto congregate at electors8217; photo identity card centres as in other parts of the country, so another arrangement had to be customised for the state 8230;

The meeting with the divisional commissioner and deputy commissioners of Jammu Division was disappointing. A meeting is meant to draw out information and perspectives, whereas this one was absurd. When a question was asked, these deputy commissioners would try to anticipate what you wished to hear and answer accordingly. Judging by the alacrity with which they were assuring us everything was fine and safe and normal, they probably thought we needed some cheery reassurance.

They could even do intensive revision within a month, when it actually took six to nine months. Scribes could be engaged to copy out the rolls nearly and legibly in two months. The computerisation of the rolls would soon follow and the photo identity card programme could begin. At the same time they advised against pasting draft electoral rolls in polling stations as this would provoke militants to blow up the buildings 8212; they didn8217;t even see they were contradicting themselves.

They didn8217;t know what they were saying, didn8217;t believe we were serious and thought they could get through another loose election with some tall talk.

We had had enough, and decided to issue brief directions. Legible copies of the electoral rolls were to be generated though offset printing and these were to be compared with the panchayat rolls in rural areas and death registers in urban areas, to get rid of dead voters 8230;

Lucknow comes to Kashmir8217;s rescue
SAMPLE copies of the rolls after offset printing were not much of an improvement. On 23 March, 2002, Noor Mohammad, chief electoral officer, Uttar Pradesh was contracted. In many constituencies in Uttar Pradesh the rolls have to be both in Hindi and in Urdu.

Noor and consultant Kommajosyula Jagannadha Rao 8212; a retired Election Commission officer who had single-handedly and fearlessly conducted some of the most difficult inquiries in the field and who was ultimately to become the real hero of the elections 8212; visited Jammu, Kathua, Udhampur, Srinagar and Badgam districts.

They met the deputy commissioners and were told that the rolls could be handwritten in the Valley but not in Jammu. Computerising seemed inevitable, but whereas Rao was doubtful that it could be done, Noor Mohammad was confident about it.

The job was given to the Uttar Pradesh Urdu Academy, a society under the state government, to do in 60 days. But the trouble was that there was no software for data entry in Urdu in the Nastalik script. Under pressure, Noor remembered there was a 1995 software for data entry in Hindi which he had used.

He went to the supplier, retrieved it from a software junkyard as it were, and modified it for use in Urdu. It was a feat in recollection, presence of mind and inventiveness, not normally associated with a bureaucrat in his daily grind.

ON 26 March the commission was also talking on telephone to A.N. Ingale, general manager, India Security Press, Nasik, about printing special paper for identity cards.

The photo identity cards for Jammu and Kashmir had to have security features of a higher order than the ones produced for the rest of the country. This was necessary to make it difficult for militant organisations to forge them.

The commission had decided that the security features should be embodied in the type of paper to be used for the identity card, and the printing on it by the Nasik Press. Since mass photography centres were to be avoided for security reasons, the photographs would have to come from the voter himself, each voter being asked to bring a pair.

One photograph would be affixed to the security paper, while the other would be kept in the office records. The details of the voter were to be filled by the taluk revenue official after verification. And then the card was to be issued 8230;

The computerisation of the state8217;s electoral rolls was not simply entering the electors8217; names 8212; it meant entry of the electors8217; details to the extent they were legible, verification of their correctness from the records as well as on the ground, and finally making the required corrections.

THE checklist obtained from the first data entry was given to the J038;K staff that had brought the records to Lucknow and Kanpur the Kanpur centre was opened later for comparison with the records and making the necessary corrections. A second checklist was then printed which was sent back to the respective districts in the state for verification in the field.

The second checklist, corrected, came back to Uttar Pradesh, was entered into the computer, generating the final printout of the roll Srinagar, Badgam and Pulwama districts were the first to be done. The remaining 11 districts were not touched until the first three districts had been done correctly.

The software company was able to prepare the software and operation manual only in the third week of April, and a demonstration-cum-training was organised on 21 April, in which the representatives of 12 agencies participated.

Most of the agencies were located in old Lucknow, the Urdu-speaking rump consisting of Molviganj, Nakkhas, Aminabad, Maqboolganj, Akbarigate and Daliganj. These places are accessible only by two-wheeler or on foot. The 12 agencies had to muster nearly 200 computers and 600 operators to run three shifts, creating a capacity of 200,000 entries per day 8230;

Farooq and his EPIC struggle
THE state government had played passive partner in the matter of identity cards, and the reason became clear when the chief minister visited the commission with adviser Ashok Tony Jaitley on one side and director general of police A.K. Suri on the other on 16 May.

Farooq began by lightly disclaiming any intention to rig the elections. He said, however, that it was not the right time to launch the EPIC programme. The identity cards might very well be resisted by militant organisations. Alternatively the cards could be forged, creating further complications for the state governmentt. Also women, particularly in the rural areas, would not cooperate.

One swiftly reminded him that more than six months earlier he had welcomed having identity cards but had since retreated apparently on the advice of the officers by his side. The DGP tried to intervene and he was ticked off 8212; the Election Commission was not going to allow the Jammu and Kashmir police to run the elections for it.

Finally, the chief minister was told that if conditions for issuing the cards were not right, the elections could bide till such conditions obtained. Farooq graciously took the view that if the commission felt so strongly about it, he would go along with it. He wryly wished the programme good luck and facetiously asked us to send him his photograph so that he could get his card made 8230;

Up the Indus, so that the monks can vote

ON 19 June the security pouch for the lamination of the identity cards was approved. By 22 June Sayan Chatterjee, Ajay Jha and I were once again in the state, but this time in Leh.

At the meeting with the chief electoral officer and deputy commissioners of Leh and Kargil it transpired that 8230; there was a serious shortage of photographers for the two photographs required for each voter8217;s identity card 8230;

Later one crossed the highest motorable pass in the sub-continent 8212; the 18,380 ft Khardong-la 8212; and bowled down to the Nobra Valley, adopted home of the double-humped Bactrian camel, and then to Diskit, one of the subdivisional headquarters. Diskit had only two photographers to take snaps for identity cards. An extract of my tour note read:

Diskit is an arbored settlement of 1,800 people 8212; including 100 monks of the local monastery many villages in Bihar are thrice as numerous. There are only 1,039 voters. Their polling station no. 18 is in the local high school which is provided with water supply, electricity and a dry latrine.

8216;Mr Jaitley, this is a discredited government8217;
Gujarat8217;s election brought Lyngdoh and the BJP into direct conflict. An account of day one of the war

THE Gujarat assembly had last met on 4 April 2002. The commission, which had been kept abreast of the communal riots and their effects by the chief electoral officer of Gujarat, was concerned about the large-scale migration of voters from their ordinary places of residence 8212; where they had been registered as voters 8212; and was therefore not inclined to hold elections in a hurry.

It saw its duty was to bring about a situation by which the displaced voters would not only be accounted for, but provided voting facilities where they had shifted.

At 11.00 am on 19 July, I.K. Gural, a former prime minister, B.G. Verghese, Swami Agnivesh, Justice Rajinder Sachar, Syeda Hamid and Harsh Mander met the commission and raised the following issues on Gujarat: electoral rolls were not reliable; officials involved in the riots had yet to be transferred, relief camps were being forcibly closed to make it appear that things had become normal; the Gujarati language media was up to mischief; the commission ought not to hold early elections even if the House were prematurely dissolved. I told the group there would not be any early elections 8230;

AT 12.30 pm, Arun Jaitley, then ex-law minister, sought an appointment for himself and was given 3.00 pm. The commission had also learnt that the Gujarat government was to have a cabinet meeting at 4.00 pm to consider the dissolution of the assembly. Jaitley was alone and pleasantries extended to discussing the elections in Jammu and Kashmir. Then Jaitley urged early elections in Gujarat because, according to him, normalcy had returned to the state.

In support of his point he cited the closing down of relief camps and the holding of local bodies8217; elections. My reply 8212; the camps had been shut down not because they were no longer required but to suggest normalcy. The affected persons were still in the vicinity of the closed camps, had not gone home and were being looked after by NGOs.

Jaitley then mentioned K.P.S. Gill as supporting the cause for early elections. My response 8212; I too had been in service, knew about Gill, and there was no need to discuss him. Inwardly I was noting all that cynicism with distaste.

Jaitley thereafter drew a paralled between Gujarat and Jammu and Kashmir, and said there was no reason why there should not be early elections in Gujarat if there was an early dissolution of the House. In fact Article 324 was circumscribed by Article 174, and the commission would have to hold elections well before the first week of October.

He cited the examples of Punjab and Assam as states where elections were held even before normalcy had returned. There had to be an end to this sophistry, and I said that the difference was that in the case of Gujarat we were dealing with a discredited government.

He accused me of using political language. I replied that language of that kind was not a politician8217;s prerogative. 8216;8216;We have lost all faith in the commission,8217;8217; he said, and stomped out of the room 8230;

In the 23 July issue of Economic Times there was a tendentious caption, 8216;Tandon, Krishnamurthy disagree with Lyngdoh8217; 8230; Acccording to the report, I did not budge despite Arun Jaitley8217;s having met the commission and explained how Article 324 was circumscribed by Article 174 8230;

The BJP would, however, continue the pressure on the commission 8212; patently this report was part of it 8212; and its pesident, M. Venkaiah Naidu, would visit the commission the following day. There was also a story to the effect that the Union cabinet had decided to add two more members to the Election Commission.

The following morning Naidu called with Jaitley in tow. When we said we were sending a team to ascertain facts in Gujarat, Jaitley accused me of having already decided against early elections. But Naidu cut him short and said he hoped I would not be sticking to the point I made in the interview with Outlook.

My reply was that that was before the dissolution of the Gujarat assembly. Now that it had been dissolved and we were sending a team, we had an open mind on the matter.

The little men who manned a big election
Ordinary government employees from Uttar Pradesh and Punjab were officials in Jammu and Kashmir in 2002. This is their story, one of heroism matched with Dutch courage

MUHAMMAD Faiyaz Khan, an assistant teacher in a primary school in Aligarh, was put in an air force plane and was pleasantly surprised to be in Srinagar within an hour. He was in a BSF camp and took to it. He rather liked being issued raw chicken which he could cook his own way. He was assigned to Latifabad and had to walk 25 km either way.

Polling was peaceful. In the second stage he did incident-free duty at Lasjanbee. in the third phase his work was at Fulwaya. he called home, saying he would return on 2 October and learnt his wife had had a heart attack, been admitted to a medical college and then discharged.

He was quite melancholy as a result, but there was dinner at 6 pm to think about. He went outside the camp to relieve himself and was hit in one eye by a bursting grenade. He was flown to All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi, and given the best and most urgent treatment, but he lost his eye 8230;

Jamal Ahmed Khan from Barabanki district had done duty in 1996. He was deployed at Bangdhar in Kupwara and was surrounded by Pakistanis on three sides. He was put through the ritual of firing from the other side and taking shelter in the bunker. Though not in love with the semi-cooked food and long steep climbs to the polling station, he was prepared to go again.

Muhammad Ashiq, an Urdu teacher from Meerut, volunteered for the extra money to marry off his sister.

Mohammad Yamin Raeen, chairman, Uttar Pradesh Urdu Development Committee, did duty in Belaboniar, Gandharbal and Noorabad. With no STD facilities, he and his colleagues communicated with their families through newspapers like Amar Ujala and Dainik Jagran. After being with the BSF he thought a teacher8217;s job was the easiest and a fauji8217;s the most difficult. He felt that Kashmiris were caught between militants and military, and politicians on both sides were responsible for the mess.

THE Punjabis left for home on 2 October, but by bus and not by air. Getting enough volunteers among them had not been easy. Ludhiana employees agitated and the district quota had to be scaled down. On the other hand, Hoshiarpur district, thanks to deputy commissioner Kirandeep Singh, contributed 300 volunteers.

As Gurjit Singh Cheema, chief electoral officer of Punjab and author of the Forgotten Mugals commented: 8216;8216;Seasoned government employees 8212; like old soldiers 8212; seldom volunteer, but if detailed for such 8216;voluntary8217; missions the majority accept, or protest only half-heartedly.8217;8217;

To quote Gurjit again: 8216;8216;Later it was learnt tht the volunteers were in high spirits when they left Hoshiarpur. The buses drove off to the sound of jaikaras battle-cries; they left in the spirit of jehadis leaving on a crusade in the cause of democracy which is one of the sacred totems of the times; but unfortunately their courage was Dutch courage, reinforced by the well-known power of desi sharab and Indian Made Foreign Liquor IMFL. Wiser after the event, instructions were sent to all the DCs over telephone to appoint responsible group leaders for each bus, and enjoining the need for sobriety8217;8217; 8230;

THERE was a tragic side to the deputations. Kuldip Singh, a 54-year-old Hindi teacher, was found dead in his seat when the bus arrived in Jammu. He had had a massive heart attack.

Mandeep Singh, teaching science near Phagwara, had enthusiastically volunteered through suffering from fever. He fought off suggestions from family members that he request to be excused, and was excited about going to Jammu and Kashmir. He got worse and a couple of days later was evacuated by helicopter to Chandigarh, but died after three days.

The others who did not return were Amrik singh, junior assistant, Audit Office, Amritsar, Jiwan Prakash, lecturer, Government Senior Secondary School, Jullunder and Kuldeep Singh who succumbed to injuries sustained in a grenade attack.