The Election Commission has received more than its share of brickbats in the conduct of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. Mulayam Singh Yadav, fighting a very tough political battle, has publicly targeted it by claiming that the EC is “not even ready to listen to us”. Then the BJP, when forced to be on the back foot over its inflammatory CD, started targeting the Commission, especially Navin Chawla.

A few facts may be mentioned to substantiate the argument that the EC has been extremely vigilant in UP. First, the elections for the state’s 403 seats will be held over seven phases for a full month — continuing up to May 8. The message is clear: an extremely abnormal political situation demands a surgical response. N. Gopalaswamy, CEC, himself stated on March 25 that the UP elections constitute a ‘mammoth task’.

The Commission has found it necessary to deploy central paramilitary forces in each and every polling booth. It has also undertaken a large-scale pre-election cleansing of the bureaucracy beginning with the replacement of the chief secretary and the director general of police on March 16. The allegation against the former chief secretary was that he had attended SP party programmes and had sung paeans in praise of the chief minister. Could the Commission have trusted the sense of neutrality, impartiality and sense of fairness of such an officer? Other senior officers, too, were given the marching orders. Further, the full three-member commission visited UP on March 28 to inspect the election arrangements and special observers were appointed “to ensure effective coordination for free and fair elections in the state”.

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