On CEC’s Table: High-voltage polls, J&K delimitation

While Sushil Chandra, an Indian Revenue Service officer with 39 years of work record, is familiar with the matters of election finance, it is the shrill political rhetoric and election-related violence that will be his top priorities as he took charge as the 24th Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) of India on April 13. His term extends till May 14, 2022.

His first set of decisions addressed these issues right away. A day after the poll panel issued a 24-hour campaign ban on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Chandra cleared three key decisions on April 13 to send out the message that the ECI is impartial. A 48-hour campaign ban was issued to BJP’s Rahul Sinha without allowing him time to explain his comments on the Cooch Behar firing incident due to the “urgency of the matter”.

State BJP president Dilip Ghosh has been slapped with an EC notice for similar comments and BJP candidate Suvendhu Adhikari’s comments have earned him an EC warning. Chandra also called a high-level meeting to tighten security arrangements for the next phases of polls in Bengal and is considering a 72-hour silence period to check violence. It will be a tough call until May 2 when he declares the polling results. But this will also prime him for another high voltage election – that in Uttar Pradesh, which has challenges similar to Bengal and will face polls in January 2022 along with Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur.

Chandra has another significant challenge at hand–– He is the ex- officio member of the Delimitation Commission announced in February 2020 for delimitation of the constituencies of Jammu & Kashmir. J&K last saw a delimitation exercise in 1995 and carving out of an additional seven constituencies is bound to generate a debate. The delimitation exercise in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland is also hanging fire over the census year question. Chandra’s larger focus, however, has been election finance and illegal money flow to and from political parties.

An IIT graduate, Chandra served as Central Board of Direct Taxes chairman from 2016 to 2019 and has been tracking this fund flow closely since then. As Election Commissioner since 15 February 2019, he has sharpened this focus. The deployment of special expenditure observers has become institutionalised in the EC drill for elections, and it is giving results though huge challenges remain.

Chandra is also the brain behind tightening the election affidavit format so that correct asset declaration is made by candidates. He is also responsible for bringing in verification of election affidavit declarations to check for income tax mismatch. A firm believer in new technology, Chandra came up with new ideas as Bihar readied for polls amid the pandemic last year. Online filing of nomination of forms to extending postal ballot facilities and more recently the downloadable version of e-EPIC or voter ID card were actively pushed by Chandra.