Election Duty

S Balakrishnan *

A Lama getting to vote for the Sangha Constituency

As part of my office duty in PIB (Press Information Bureau, Union Ministry of Information & Broadcasting), I looked forward to the special assignment of Election Duty. I found the election duty exciting; keeping in touch with our Headquarters in New Delhi through hotline, we were to release the election results to the media like hot cakes.

When I joined PIB in 1978 at the remote station of Port Blair in Andamans, Janata Dal party, headed by Morarji Desai, was already in power, winning the 1997 general elections to the 6th Lok Sabha (held in March 1997), as a consequence of violations during the ‘emergency era’ of the previous regime headed by Indira Gandhi of Congress.

Election graffiti

I had the opportunity to see Morarji Desai in 1979 when he came to Port Blair to declare Cellular Jail as a National Memorial. The first election I faced after joining duty was in January 1980, as the Janata Dal alliance could not hold on to power due to squabbles.

The remote Island Territory of Andaman & Nicobar has only one Lok Sabha seat; as the Union Territory was cut off from the mainland due to lack of communication facilities, there was nothing we could do. The teleprinter was as good as dead and one had to wait for a day or two for a trunkcall to mainland to mature.

Further, there was no media as such in Port Blair – only All India Radio (which had its own communication lines), the official daily ‘The Daily Telegraph’, and one or two weekly newspapers – all tabloid-size newspapers. No TV then. Indira Gandhi again emerged as the unassailable leader by winning the 1980 elections to the 7th Lok Sabha.

Dragon's declaration

The next Lok Sabha election was held in 1984 after the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984. Held in December 1984, Rajiv Gandhi, son of the assassinated Prime Minister, came to power in a landslide victory due to sympathy wave.

This time I was in the Gangtok Branch of PIB which again lacked media; besides AIR and the State Government newspaper ‘Sikkim Herald’, one or two weekly newspapers – all tabloid-size - were the only media.

Again, Gangtok was also cut off most of the time communication-wise. The office teleprinter worked erratically and the landline phone was dead most of the time. Besides a Rajya Sabha seat, Sikkim also has a lone Lok Sabha seat, same as A&N Islands. So there was no effective election duty until I joined the Madras (Chennai) office in 1988.

However, when Sikkim faced the assembly elections in 1985 (polling day March 5, 1985), armed with a ‘PRESS’ identity card (courtesy my office) I had the thrill of photographing the voting process. I exposed one film roll of 36 frames covering the campaign scenes and the polling process in & around Gangtok.

The next film roll was used to cover the victory procession of Sikkim Sangram Parishad (SSP) led by Nar Bahadur Bhandari. It was a landslide victory for SSP which won 30 out of 32 assembly seats. Congress got only one seat and the other winner was an independent, Bal Chand Sarada, from Gangtok.

Waiting to vote - Gangtok 1985

In the Madras Office (now Chennai) from 1987 to 2016, I was part of the election duty team during Lok Sabha elections in 1989, 1991, 1992, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2004, 2009, 2014, either at the office itself or at the State Secretariat’s Press Room.

From the Press Room we passed on the hot results to our office and also to Headquarters in New Delhi through hot line for local and all-India release, respectively. But it was livelier working at the office, chitchatting among the colleagues; hot snacks and beverages were served from time to time to keep us awake and alert.

But PIB lost much of its significance after communication boom – computer, internet, social media, private TV channels that offer ‘breaking news’ 24x7. Only after retirement I could watch the live election broadcasts which I had missed working in the office on election duty.