Laloo Prasad Yadav's exertions against the Election Commission of India must be seen in context. A pattern is becoming visible. Every time it looks like the RJD boss could finally be hemmed in by the troubles that trail him, political and legal, he kicks up a very loud, very public, fuss. Suddenly he is the centre of the show. There he is, flamboyantly cutting through due process, preferably ranged against a formidable public institution, all the better for the irresistible photo-op. In the run-up to Bihar polls, he conjures up a brand new inquiry to excavate Godhra’s ‘‘truth’’. From the site of a devastating railway accident, the Union railway minister proclaims his own persecution by Narendra Modi. Now, when cases of the fodder scam and those that have to do with assets allegedly disproportionate to his income encircle him once more, his lawyers take it into their hands to tell the Supreme Court just how it cannot supervise the judicial proceedings. Then, the minister himself flashes a civil servant’s letter and asks for the election commissioners’ resignation, if not a restructured institution.The allegations themselves are serious, but shifty. What began on Day 1 mainly as a charge that two election commissioners — one of them the CEC-to-be — had decided to countermand the Chapra polls last year because of ‘‘their allegiance to BJP, RSS and other communal alliances’’, narrowed on Day 2 to mainly a slur on the ECs’ ‘‘casteism’’. There are the coincidences that need explaining. The two bureaucrats on the offensive are both serving in a ministry presided over by a Laloo lieutenant; one of them was superceded and is presently on the verge of retirement and approval of a post-retirement sinecure. Even if these are convincingly explained away, there still remains the manner in which the EC’s credibility is sought to be questioned. A constitutional body cannot be dragged through a public harangue like this. A case against the EC, if there is one to be made at all, must be substantiated and pursued with rigour and respect for due process. A Union minister should know this.The problem is really this: Laloo Prasad Yadav’s repeated refusal to play it by the rulebook. And a patchwork government in which the Congress feels it must grin and bear this defiance by the leader of a paltry band of MPs for its own survival. But Laloo, and the Congress, must know that there is a high price to be paid for political adventurism of the kind that is currently on display. Institutions like the EC are important not just for the work that they do but also because they shore up the health of the larger system. If the EC’s credibility is undermined through irresponsible politics, we all pay.
