India’s Election Has a Transparency Problem
Publishing date: 23 May 2024
Published in: Bloomberg
If the nervousness in the stock mkt is anything to go by, PM Narendra Modi’s bid for a third term doesn’t appear to be as secure as it did earlier this year. But regardless of who wins when ballots are counted Jun 4, the cty’s besieged democracy is the biggest loser. Instead of focusing on their own policies, Modi and his Hindu rt-wing BJP have run a polarizing campaign that in the process of attacking his pol opponents vilified the Muslim community, India’s largest religious minority. Civil-society gps have dragged the election watchdog to India’s Supreme Court, which last wk asked the commission to answer a simple question: Why can’t it publicly rel data on the no of people who have voted?
▪️Indeed, it is required to be handed over to the agents of all candidates in each of the cty’s 1.2 million polling booths after the last ballots are cast. Why not upload scanned copies of this info, Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud asked the commission. A third term for the Indian prime minister is not as certain as it looked before the election. This time around, the gap b/w the initial and final estimates amounts to an increase of more than 10 million votes in just the first four rounds. India’s 2024 elections got underway with unanswered questions around electronic voting machines. A Supreme Court bench dismissed civil-society gps’ demand for 100% matching of the paper slips that are briefly shown to voters behind a glass display with the actual votes recorded by the machines. As Tamil Nadu politician Palanivel Thiaga Rajan wrote recently, “We have not invested enough attention, importance, money, or time into the electoral process that forms the bedrock of a functional democracy.”