The perfect solution
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: April 18, 2014 -

“Except for some stray incidents of violence, polling was by and large peaceful.” This is what media reports on any election that depend largely on official sources, says normally.

Even if that election was conducted amid tight security ring all over, or if that some stray incidents of violence reported included booth rigging, proxy voting, over-polling, intimidation to voters, clashes among party workers of two rival candidates or any other malpractices one could thought of, ‘peace’ is the one word that never fails to come out from the mouth of the officials responsible for ensuring smooth conduct of the election while briefing media.

Base on this yardstick, the just concluded Lok Sabha election to the Inner-Manipur Parliamentary Constituency was one of the most peaceful elections that the people of Manipur have ever witnessed with a rather impressive turn out of voters.

After all, there were not many reports of malpractices in the election this time, with exception, of course, to the complaint over alleged indulgence in the proxy voting by the Congress candidate and sitting MP Dr Th Meinya himself at one of the polling stations and detection of over-polling in another polling station in Thoubal Assembly Constituency, which is, fortunately or unfortunately, the home turf of Chief Minister O Ibobi Singh.

So, this was the election to the Inner Manipur Parliamentary Constituency.

If the ‘peaceful election’ to the reserved Outer Manipur Parliamentary seat on April 9 was all about guns silencing the voice of the people in the hills, that of the polling to the Outer seat in the valley on April 17 has just shown to what extent the ruling parties and their candidates could play the ‘spoil brats’, not just with guns, but also by influencing the poor officials on election duty, who may also get slapped for their misconduct.

Well, talking ensuring peaceful conduct of the election, which, of course, has always remained a wishful dream of the Election Commission of India (ECI) regardless of the numerous measures initiated every now and then, officials on election duty in future could very well learn a lesson from the polling experiences in a district of Madhya Pradesh, which is notorious for violence during polls.

As the six-phase of the 16th Lok Sabha election was underway in 12 States including Manipur on April 17, the district administration in charge of conducting the election in the Morena Parliamentary Constituency of Madhya Pradesh came up with a perfect solution for ensuring peaceful conduct of polling by picking up all the contesting candidates including former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s nephew Anup Mishra of the BJP, Govind Singh of the Congress and BSP’s Vrindavan Singh and keeping them together in the control room of a police station during the voting, so that they could not create any trouble. Left with no option, the rival candidates spent their time together reading newspapers and bonding over coffee.

Once allowed to leave the control room after the detention all the candidates were also reportedly seen going in a car and driving off for lunch together.

In this way, the district officials ensure that the candidates did not intimidate voters or incite their own party men.

This we say is the perfect remedy for realising the dream of a peaceful polling in the country.

And, if we were to quote official sources on the conduct of election, we would rather go by the words that come out from the mouth of these officials in the Madhya Pradesh district, rather than what our own home grown officials, who see nothing amiss in complaint galore, would say.