EC finally restores a sense of sanity
It was literally the last minute. Just one day before the first phase of voting in a momentous general election. If institutional credibility was at stake, it’s perhaps better that the Election Commission acted—even belatedly, and not necessarily on the scale required.
Not acting, or not responding to an air of deep scepticism that was building up about its efficacy and non-partisanship, was simply not an option. Perhaps it was the sheer glut of events that seemed to belittle its policing in general, indeed many of them directly challenging the very neutrality of its vigil, that finally impelled the EC.
Overt appeals to the electorate in the name of religion or the Armed Forces, sundry other seemingly blatant violations of the Model Code of Conduct, a slew of I-T raids on a whole roster of Opposition leaders right on the eve of elections, an accomplishment in the field of space science offering free air-time to the ruling party on national television, the shadowy money trails behind the proliferation of political advertising masquerading as fan pages on social media...the disquiet had been rising, and peaking, over these recent weeks on too many counts.
But on April 10, two decisive moves were made by the EC to restore a sense of sanity to the proceedings. A biopic on the prime minister—scheduled to be released on April 11, exactly as the first set of Indian voters line up outside polling booths—has been debarred from screening till the end of elections. And the mint-fresh NaMo TV, which is being called an ‘advertising portal’ but is carried by DTH operators, has been made subject to the EC’s content certification regime. And the BJP’s expenditure on it needs to reflect in its books. It’s a sign of the vitality of institutions if they are responsive to criticism. Even if it’s almost too late.