Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Sunday alleged that the Union government amending an election rule to restrict public access to polls-related documents was part of a “systematic conspiracy” to undermine the Election Commission’s integrity.
Kharge wrote in a post on X that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government’s “calibrated erosion” of the Election Commission’s institutional integrity was a frontal attack on the Constitution and democracy.
As first reported by Scroll, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government on Friday amended Rule 93(2)(a) of the 1961 Conduct of Election Rules, which stated that “all other papers relating to the election shall be open to public inspection”.
The amended version of the rule said: “All other papers as specified in these rules relating to the election shall be open to public inspection.”
With this change notified by the Union Ministry of Law and Justice, in consultation with the Election Commission, not all poll-related papers can be inspected by the public. Only those papers specified in the Conduct of Election Rules can be inspected by the public.
The courts would also not be able to direct the poll panel to provide all election-related papers to the public.
This came days after the Punjab and Haryana High Court on December 9 directed the Election Commission to provide videography, security camera footage and copies of documents related to votes polled at a polling station during the recent Haryana Assembly elections to advocate Mehmood Pracha.
On Saturday Kharge said that the Centre first removed the chief justice of India from the panel to appoint Election Commissioners, and had now “resorted to stonewall electoral information, even after a High Court order”.
The Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha claimed that when the Congress wrote to the Election Commission about alleged poll irregularities, it responded "in a condescending tone” and did not even acknowledge certain serious complaints.
“This again proves that the ECI, even though is a quasi-judicial body is not behaving independently,'“ he said.
On Saturday, Congress MP Jairam Ramesh said that the amendment to the Conduct of Election Rules lent credence to the party’s repeated assertions regarding the “rapidly eroding integrity” of the electoral process managed by the Election Commission.
“Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and information will restore faith in the process – a reasoning the Punjab and Haryana High Court agreed with when it directed the ECI [Election Commission] to share all information that it is legally required to do so with the public,” Ramesh said on the social media platform X.
“Yet the ECI, instead of complying with the judgment, rushes to amend the law to curtail the list of what can be shared,” the Rajya Sabha MP added. “Why is the ECI so afraid of transparency?”
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