The marathon schedule stretching over 36 days for General Elections 2014 has at last come to a close, Thank God. People like me wonder: was it necessary to take so long? Election commission claims that it was necessary to stretch it out to avoid Law and Order problems, and to ensure Free and Fair Elections. To what extent was this objective achieved? Whatever the EC gloats over, the general perception is that EC was not a grand success.  The one important benefit to the contestants is that barring the first two polling dates on April 6 and 9, the warring factions had a lot of time to sharpen their claws and go at each other for a longer time. The Varanasi contestants had the maximum benefit of abusing the opponents with great acrimony and praising themselves vigorously. News coverage has supersaturated us with the escapades of the contestants, how they hoodwinked the EC and flooded the voters with money and booze. Right from day 1 when the schedule was announced till the last polling day (yes, people claim that even on May 12 they received their money and booze) voters had the supplies to their heart’s content. True, EC proudly claim that several crores of rupees and several lakh liters of liquor were confiscated. People in the know aver that what has been confiscated is only the tip of the iceberg. Several people were wailing that they did not get their bonanza because either their names were dropped from the voters’ list or their requests for enrollment were ignored. All sorts of surmises are in place for deletion/non-inclusion of voters’ names. Law and order maintenance has failed. The violent clashes in AP and West Bengal, for example, prove it. What exactly can the EC do when there are cases of open flouting of the Election Code by, or on behalf contestants? What could the EC do when Rahul Gandhi visited polling booths on Election Day and there were complaints galore about it? Turn a Nelson’s eye on that. Lallu Prasad Yadav was thankful to TN Seshan when he was the EC, for ensuring Lallu’s success in the elections with so many restrictions or restraints on him and his Party which proved counter productive leading to his victory. Is the present EC’s exercise similar, (for example prevent of Modi meeting) and if so, for whose benefit? The long drawn out schedule is a mockery of our capacity to hold elections in a reasonable time frame: the objectives have not been achieved. There is a strong case for compressing the schedule and holding elections in a few days if not on one day: is it not a slur on our Law enforcement agencies and indirectly admitting that they are not up to the job?   

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