Even Raja Harishchandra would not be able to cope with Nirvachan Sadan's Messiah-power
God sent for Moses for He knew He could give Moses the Ten Commandments.
Had He sent for Seshan, Seshan would have given God the Ten Commandments.
Congratulations, Sir, on your Magsaysay Award.
I think the chief election commissioner would agree with me that
the greatest triumph of his triumph-filled six years has been
that he has actually succeeded in getting Parliament to come to
grips with the agonising problem of electoral reforms. Politicians
who though they could get away with money-power and Muscle-power
now find themselves up against Messiah-power.
While Parliament wrestles with the Law of Elections, perhaps the
election commissioners would care to turn their collective attention
to the in-house problem of the commission's rules and directions,
a compendium of some 500 pages of the most convoluted bureaucratese
which candidates, or at any rate their agents, are required to
master if they really wish to keep themselves on the right side
of a watchful law.
Many of these rules, regulations, directives
obiter dicta, ex cathedra pronouncements date back to the time
when lawyers fought elections. Nirvachan Sadan then occupied its
many empty hours drafting endless orders in language that grabbed
the lawyers where they lived. The lawyers, therefore, did not
demur.
We have now entered the Era of Bandit Queen Emeritus, but Nirvachan
Sadan has made no effort to make its rules comprehensible in the
Chambal ravines; instead, they have had the effrontery to render
comprehensive the accumulated gobbledygook of 50 years by publishing
the lot in a handy, if bulky, volume. I am willing to bet that
none of the election commissioners has actually read all the turgid
500 pages: it would drive a man mad -- or, possibly, position
him to take over from Seshan on 12.12.96.
My plea, therefore,
is that if it is Parliament's duty to make the Law of Elections
integrity-friendly, it is the duty of the Election Commission
to translate the law into rules sufficiently simple and transparent
for comprehension by the simple folk -- Taslimuddin, Churchill
Alemao, D P Yadav, et al --- who are today receiving the mandate
of the people to rule. Whatever their antecedents, abiding by
the law must surely be -- of assumed to be -- the condition precedent
to their making the law. At present, even Raja Harishchandra
would not be able to cope with Nirvachan Sadan's Messiah-power.
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