The quibbling can go on over the legal minutiae of the Supreme Court’s advisory opinion on the presidential reference on Gujarat, it is time now to concentrate on the challenge of holding free and fair elections in the state. Much like Jammu and Kashmir, Gujarat has become a crucible state — elections here have implications that reach far beyond its boundaries. In a sense, the idea of India is at stake — and, as many have expressed the fear, besieged — in both settings. In Kashmir, the Election Commission, the state and central governments, the political parties and, above all, the people, admirably rose to the challenge to protect and, yes, to enhance it. Will Gujarat bring us more reason to feel good?There is work to be done, and not just by the Election Commission. Of course, the commission will have its hands full and it has seldom been better equipped. It basks still in the glow of the successful election it helmed in J&K, one that even sceptics have acknowledged to be free and fair. When Chief Election Commissioner J.M. Lyngdoh promises, therefore, to ensure that the ‘little voter, whatever his denomination or background, is free to vote’ come December in Gujarat, his words resonate with a hard-won and just-proved institutional credibility. But, at the risk of saying the obvious, it needs to be reiterated that the EC cannot do it alone and it cannot possibly do it all. While it has sent out the right signals — it is making efforts to trace the missing voters in order to ensure that they can vote from their new addresses in Gujarat and in neighbouring states and it has sought a large force from the home ministry to be deployed in sensitive areas — Gujarat needs more than a strict and fair monitor. For democracy to be at its best, what is also required is that the polarisation that the carnage left behind is not aggravated by the political campaigns. As was so visible in J&K, it needs a resolve by party leaderships, in the states and at the Centre, to behave with responsibility and restraint. In Gujarat, it will need above all, that Narendra Modi is not allowed by party seniors to carry on with his campaign of hate, on display during his recent gaurav yatra. The prime minister and deputy prime minister must surely be aware that the gains gathered from having presided over a free election in Kashmir can all too easily be frittered away in Gujarat.What is needed most of all is that the atmosphere of fear and insecurity that prompted the EC’s August 16 order to postpone elections is dispelled. Finally, though, like the people of J&K, the people of Gujarat must decide to let nothing and nobody stand in the way of their right, and power, to vote.
