In 2024, an election-packed year, 642 million people voted in the 18th Lok Sabha elections, returning the current BJP-led NDA government to power for a record third term while simultaneously giving the Congress-led Opposition alliance a footing in Parliament.
The signs of a thriving democracy cannot be missed with eight hard-fought assembly elections conducted successfully and peacefully through the year.
However, it is the election in Jammu & Kashmir that stands out.
Bringing down the curtains on six years of presidential rule in the aftermath of the abrogation of Article 370, the Election commission of India (ECI) conducted a tight three-phase assembly polls in J&K even as there were serious security concerns amid reports of a hundred plus infiltrators and a spate of terror attacks in Jammu region.
That the troubled border region could see a near incident-free election, without any boycott calls and voter intimidation while registering a double-digit voter turnout across all constituencies, including in the Kashmir valley and border districts, and going without a single repoll – was unthinkable in 2019 or even in 2017 when a Srinagar bypoll posted a mere 7% turnout and left eight dead.
To its credit, the poll panel kept its performance streak going with smooth conduct of assembly polls in Haryana, Jharkhand and Maharashtra later in the year.
It will need to continue doing so in 2025 as Delhi heads to polls early in the year and closes with Bihar, both expected to be high voltage battles.
The latter will also mean that the election landscape will once again be faced with issues raised by the Opposition on electoral data transparency besides the recurrent questions on the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).
Fresh battle lines are, in fact, getting drawn as the year closes, with the ECI amending the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, following a December 9, 2024, order of the Punjab & Haryana High Court to provide CCTV footage and videography records of a polling station in Haryana.
The Congress has already termed it a move against electoral transparency and has challenged it in the court.
This is, however, one of the many challenges posed before the apex election body of the country which must stay extra vigilant as the chief custodian of electoral integrity.
There are lessons to be drawn from the first two phases of the LS polls when the ECI drew much flak for the delayed publishing of full voter turnout figures – a procedural dithering that ended up allowing space for questioning of ECI’s intent and approach and more importantly, the overall election process.
More so, given that the ECI has gone on to bring in several mechanisms over the years to ensure greater confidence across electoral processes- including those related to the oft maligned EVM- and all these have served its cause well.
Case in point: Amid the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the SC ordered the ECI to allow two losing candidates in a constituency to seek Checking & Verification (C&V) of microcontrollers/burnt memory of up to 5% EVMs.
Just eight such applications were filed against 543 Lok Sabha constituencies, and no discrepancies were reported anywhere. However, the ECI will still need to stay alive to these issues as scepticism persists in political narratives.
A hundred-plus EVM C&V requests are lined up after the recently conducted Maharashtra polls. Senior Opposition leaders have just mooted a national campaign against the EVMs. In Haryana polls, a national party claimed “battery- linked manipulation” in the EVMs.
With the recent amendment of election rules allowing the ECI to withhold electronic records of polling stations, eyebrows are bound to be raised both in political camps and in courts and still further, find much amplification on social media platforms.
Such narratives will also have a bearing on the proposed plans for the conduct of simultaneous elections in the country – a political hot potato that may land the ECI’s way.
At the same time, the ‘One Nation, One Election (ONOE)’ proposal is a logistical challenge that the ECI will only face and effect over the next five years, depending on parliamentary outcomes.
There are, however, definite institutional changes coming the ECI way in 2025 itself.
A new Chief Election Commissioner will helm the ECI as incumbent Rajiv Kumar wraps up his term after the Delhi polls. With a new CEC in place, the appointment of a new Election Commissioner will also be necessitated and the process will be committee-driven, in keeping with the court orders.
While there is bound to be much political noise around these key appointments, the new ECI team has its task clearly cut out- it must ensure that India’s electoral integrity stays beyond reproach and question and is also seen to be so- especially in polarising, politically fraught times, both at home and around the globe.
