EC defends decision to allow postal votes for those above 65 years

The Election Commission on Wednesday defended its decision to allow voters above 65 years and Covid-19 positive and suspect people to cast postal votes, saying it was done to their exposure in public and not deprive them of their voting rights.

The EC's response came as CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury shot off a letter to Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora on Monday objecting to taking "unilateral" measures without consulting parties and warning that these could lead to instances of "manipulation and malpractice" resulting in "potential favor of the ruling party".

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The EC had allowed people above the age of 80 years last October and those above 65 years and Covid-19 affected people postal votes in June.

In response to Yechury, Deputy Election Commissioner Chandra Bhushan Kumar said the Representation of the People Act, 1951 allowed the EC to decide on the postal vote in consultation with the government.

On allowing people above 80 years and disabled voters the facility of postal votes, Bhushan said in his letter that the EC piloted the project in last year's Jharkhand election when 680 senior citizens and 1,338 disabled used the facility. In Delhi Assembly elections, 2,557 senior citizens, 429 disabled, and 19 voters involved in essential services used it.

On extending services to all those above 65 years, Bhushan said the EC considered the "extraordinary situation" due to Covid-19 to "minimise their exposure in public and yet not deprive them of their voting rights".

He also said the EC has held meetings with parties in Bihar, where Assembly election is due later this year, and directed to limit the number of voters in each polling station to 1,000 and to create auxiliary polling stations in the same locality so that social distancing norms are enforced during voting.

Bhushan said, "electors and political parties/entities are the most important stakeholder in our electoral system. All efforts are made to ensure their inclusiveness without compromising the integrity of the process."

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"Commission has been consistently applying the existing statutory framework in the interest of electors, which enables their maximum participation, especially in challenging times like the present one. Commission would welcome any suggestion for further steps required to be taken to meet the emerging challenges. Commission, as in the past, always values the inputs of the political parties," he added.

However, Yechury said the EC has not responded to the core issue raised by him about consultation with parties. "These decisions are not specific to one single state. It is for the entire country. That is why there is a need for a consultation with parties at national level," he told DH.

In his letter on June 29, Yechury had said, "from the media reports we are constrained to infer that the tearing hurry that the ECI displays is on account of the impending Bihar Assembly elections scheduled to be held in November, 2020."

He highlighted that consensus among parties and the Election Commission is necessary for introducing new voting practices which will adversely affect the verifiability of a large number of voters, "thus, transparency and integrity of the process; not to mention, the leverage available to the incumbent administration in organising the postal ballots".

"Our electoral system has always treated physical verifiability of the voters as the bedrock of integrity. With the two amendments to the Rules, a very large number of voters will be out of the verifiability matrix. This assumes great significance because of instances of manipulation and malpractice even with the comparatively low number of postal ballots used by service personnel on election duty," he said.

"With the unresolved question of opaque electoral bonds on poll funding, which remains pending before the Supreme Court, where the ECI has itself agreed with us that this poses a major challenge in monitoring and supervising income/expenditure, this new use of postal ballots will further aggravate the situation in potential favour of the ruling party," Yechury said in the letter.

Yechury reminded the Election Commission that it had always insisted that it would not unilaterally exercise power given to it under Article 324 that allows "control and superintendence" of elections mandated by the Constitution.

He said it had created an "extremely healthy precedent" of recognising the political parties, representing the people, as principal stakeholders.

He noted that the Model Code of Conduct (MCC), a major electoral reform, was arrived at through the consensus of the entire spectrum of parties. "Even though this is not backed by statutory empowerment, it has never been questioned. This practice has reinforced transparency in the system earning widespread appreciation," he said.