elections
Lately, opposition parties have targeted CEC office for being unfair, accusing them of "Vote-Chori" and not following the SIR process in an unbiased way. Earlier, we saw similar tussle between Aam Aadmi Party Govt in Delhi and LG. The legal immunity given to constitutional authorities is a way to protect them so that they can stay away from political pressure. Usually, it is argued that the Govt won't be able to pressurise sensitive posts to keep the democracy alive. But, in these cases the pressure is coming from the Opposition. The removal of CEC is a painfully long process and numbers are not there with Opposition parties. They know this and that's why they're demanding a resignation. The opposition parties accuse CEC to play puppet of the Govt and strike down names of citizen without verifying. The large numbers showing as Dead or Migrated are wrong according to them and genuine voters are being left out to help BJP form the Govt in elections. West Bengal is the example taken up by the parties where BJP formed Govt for the first time.
Take a stance to see what people think.
Results open up once you've answered, so they don't sway you.
Mark an argument convincing even if you took the other side. It shows which points persuade people across the divide.
Opposition have every right to criticise any process/official that is not working.
Govt has made it impossible to remove CEC by giving immunity. If the process is hurting citizen's rights then hitting the streets is a democratic right of the political parties.
CEC should remain independent of the political pressures. Political process is to raise the issue in Parliament.
If opposition was serious on the issue, they'd file a petition, raise the issue in the Parliament and take signature of 100 MPs to force Govt to remove CEC. They're just doing theatrics on street.
SIR process is mandated by the SC and EC office is bound to follow the instructions set out for this process. If the discrepancies are there in the process, the buck stops at EC office and hence the demand of resignation from CEC. In a large country like India, creating a process that works for such a large population is almost impossible. The mistakes would happen. Whether these mistakes are intentional, it's a matter of investigation and introspection. Demanding resignation and accusing CEC of "Vote-Chori" is a bit too harsh. In a democratic set up, CEC won't know which voters belong to opposition before striking down their names from the vote list. At best, the opposition should demand a judicial committee to monitor all cases which EC has categorised as "Dead", "Migrated" etc. so that fairness of the process is maintained.
