Censorship made EC

This is clearly a development that the Founding Fathers of the Republic had failed to anticipate. This is what they had to say about the functions of the Election Commission EC in Article 324 of the Constitution: 8220;The superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of the electoral rolls for, and the conduct of, all elections to Parliament8230;shall be vested in a Commission8221;. Nowhere is the regulation of campaign rhetoric listed. Of course, it could be argued that since the EC is in charge of the 8220;conduct8221; of elections it should logically be in charge of electoral conduct as well. The Supreme Court seems to have come to this conclusion by ruling that all political advertisements in the electronic media would first have to be cleared by the EC.

We would say that this is stretching things a bit too far. The EC should be allowed to stick to its core competency 8212; that of ensuring the smooth administration of a process involving 670 voters. It must ensure that the voters8217; lists reflect the numbers on the ground; ensure that the powerful do not tweak the system for their own ends; ensure that people do not face impediments in exercising their franchise and 8212; perhaps most important of all 8212; ensure that the results declared faithfully reflect the wishes of the voters. This is a job that is of gargantuan proportions and the challenges are equally enormous, as the Commission perhaps discovered when it sought the transfer of Haryana8217;s director-general of police, for allowing his wife 8212; presently standing for elections on a ticket from the state8217;s ruling party 8212; to make full use of his official facilities for her campaign. The Haryana chief minister, no less, sought to thumb his nose at the EC by flatly refusing to comply with the order at first.

The EC8217;s time and attention should go in addressing larger issues like this, not in deciding whether political advertising on television passes the test of political correctness. In any case, noxious election advertising tends to pan out. Notice how the 8220;art film8221; put out by the Kamakshi Education Society, which sought to attack the Congress president on her foreign origins, was quickly and neatly neutralised by the efforts of the Sanjhi Virasat Trust, casting a shadow on the prime minister for being a 8220;police informer8221; in pre-independence India. Notice how quickly both the BJP and the Congress ran for cover. If one party can stoop to the level of bar-room brawlers, so can others, and before long everybody will learn the virtues of self-regulation. In other words, let the EC do its job, and let the political parties in the fray mind their language.