Is the Election Commission of India missing the wood for the trees? Or has it become so co-opted by the establishment that it is indifferent to issues that underlie its own doctrine? A day ago, the EC banned four prominent political leaders from campaigning with varying suspension orders, from Yogi Adityanath, Mayawati, Azam Khan and Maneka Gandhi, ranging from 48 hours to 72 hours. They were all prohibited from holding public meetings and rallies, and interactions with the media, for hate speech, derogatory sexist remarks and appealing to voters in the name of religion.

However, what marks out Maneka Gandhi specifically is her threat to voters, in this case, Muslim voters in the Turabakhni Basti in Sultanpur, Uttar Pradesh, her constituency, warning that she will know which booth throws up the maximum and minimum votes in her favour. As she had said, “When the election comes and this booth throws up 100 votes or 50 votes, and then you come to me for work we will see… So it is up to you.”  While the EC has reprimanded her for her statements to a Muslim crowd, her threats about booth voting information and how she will use it gets worse.

According to media reports, Gandhi says she uses the “ABCD formula” to categorise villages that vote in her favour —  a village that votes 80 per cent will be given A certificate; B for 60 per cent; C for below etc; and that development projects will be given according to their vote percentage for her. According to her statements in Issauli, Sultanpur, just before the ban, and as reported in the media, Gandhi has said those who did not vote for her will get development projects only after she finished with her favourites.

This is not the first time a prominent BJP leader has threatened to use booth voting information to target voters. In June 2018, the controversial BJP candidate from Bangalore South, Tejaswi Surya, waved the list of booth results in a ward in Jayanagar, where the BJP lost the election to the Congress in the state Assembly polls, to say in a series of tweets: “More than 90 per cent of polled votes in Muslim areas in Jayanagar went to Congress while Hindu votes in Hindu areas were split between BJP and Congress. Demography is the key in democracy. When will we Hindus understand this simple truth? Complete consolidation of Hindus is the only way!”

And another tweet:

Bizarrely, the Election Commission sees nothing immoral or improper in the fact that political leaders are using booth-wise results to declare publicly that people who do not vote for them will be denied development projects that range from opening schools, health centres, industry; to providing water, electricity, sanitation, roads etc. Others like Tejaswi Surya have shown how booth-wise results reveal voting patterns based on religious demography and so, as a devout representative of Hindus, Tejaswi not only demonises the Muslim community but says complete Hindu consolidation is the only answer for the BJP’s success.

So, how do political parties access booth-wise results? Does making booth-wise results accessible, even if legal, go against the principle of a secret ballot guaranteed by the Representation of People’s Act, 1951? Is it electronic voting machines that fly in the face of secrecy of individual choice in an election?

Former Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalswami explains the procedure:

“Form 20 of the Election Commission gives you data of every polling booth in the country, of over 10 lakh booths; it lists out the name of every candidate in the booth, the number of votes the candidate polled, and the number of EVMs (electronic voting machines) used. Booth-wise data has been available of elections from 2009, when EVMs began to be used all over the country, though the EC has data dating back to 2003, when it was used intermittently in places like Mizoram, Tripura, Puducherry among others.

Before 2009, when ballot papers were used by the electorate, it was required by the EC to mix up the votes in drums in designated areas before being counted in parts of the constituency depending on the size, so that it ensured a certain amount of anonymity and protection to the people in the area of the booth. However, things have changed ever since the EVMs came into practice.

Does Form 20 go against the principle of the secret ballot? Gopalswami says, “Technically, booth-wise results do not go against the principle of a secret ballot as it does not reveal an individual voter’s choice but of a group of people voting in a particular booth.” The former CEC agrees that “it is not illegal but it is not a happy situation”.

How did the EC allow political parties and governments to get away with accessing sensitive voting data of people, their preferences and choices they made in an election? Did the people know that their vote was no longer safe and secret and that political parties and leaders have been using booth data to threaten them to submission? What is the solution to keep voting preferences obscure and inscrutable?

SK Mendiratta, legal advisor to the EC, says a change in rules has been presented to the government of the day, since 2011, but no one has acted to make it right. “The EC’s technical expert committee has presented various solutions, most significant being the use of the totaliser machine, but no government has acted on it as yet as it requires amendments to the rules.”

Like the paper ballots in barrels before; the totaliser machine is used for mixing up votes from 14 EVMs at a time, also called cluster counting, so as to protect the anonymity of booth-wise voting preferences. But not surprisingly, political parties have been resisting the move ever since. In September 2014, soon after the Narendra Modi came to power, the Supreme Court pulled up the Centre for not taking a decision on the EC’s request to do away with Form 20 that gave booth-wise results. The then chief justice RM Lodha even raised the terror of vindictiveness by the winning candidate towards the booth voters he didn’t get votes from. The Bench was hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by Punjab-based advocate Yogesh Gupta who had asked for a ban on booth-wise results, citing a reported threat made by former Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar, in 2014, to residents of Baramati village that he would cut off water supply if they did not cast their ballot in favour of his cousin and sitting NCP MP, Supriya Sule.

Even as late as March 2018, the Modi government opposed the court’s question on using totaliser machines to protect voters saying it does not serve any larger public interest. The government’s team of ministers, led by the Home Minister, Rajnath Singh, to look into the EC’s proposal of totalisers, concluded that “revelation of booth-wise votes polled by a candidate would perhaps be more beneficial and useful since it would facilitate candidates and parties to find out the areas where they have shown better result and they have not shown good results so as to work more for that area.” The ministerial team also concluded in the age of media activism, intimidation and victimisation may not occur on such a large scale.

Perhaps, with the threats issued by Minister Maneka Gandhi and with outcries like that of Tejaswi Surya, the time has come to focus on the immorality of releasing booth-wise results and the clandestine way politicians and political parties manipulate the data with vindictiveness.