Manufacturing Mayhem, Disrupting Democracy: Election Commission’s Submission Once Again Exposes Rahul Gandhi’s Politics of Crying Foul: Captain Brijesh Chowta
New Delhi: In neighbourhood cricket, there is often a player who cannot accept defeat. When he cannot play well, he throws away the bat and ball. When the umpire gives a decision against him, he accuses the umpire of bias. And if he happens to be the landlord’s son, he may even try to bully everyone who dares to call out his poor game.
That is precisely what Rahul Gandhi’s politics increasingly resembles. Every time he is confronted with an electoral setback, every time the people deliver a verdict he does not like, he seems to reach for the same playbook: question the umpire, discredit the game, and cast aspersions on the entire system. When the verdict of the people does not suit him, he appears more interested in discrediting the process than in understanding it.
This is not an isolated instance. It is a pattern. A party that has repeatedly struggled to reconcile itself with electoral setbacks now seems to have made questioning democratic institutions its preferred political response.
And coming from a party whose leadership has a long history of exercising power through a political dynasty, this disregard for institutional propriety is particularly ironic.
The Congress’s record during the Emergency remains a stark reminder of what happens when political power is placed above democratic institutions.
But this is New India. This is a country where facts can no longer be buried under a mountain of allegations, where institutions can speak for themselves and where attempts to manufacture a crisis can be challenged by the truth. Falsehood may travel fast, but it cannot outrun facts indefinitely.
The latest controversy surrounding the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is a case in point. Rahul Gandhi and the Congress attempted to portray differences within the Election Commission as evidence of a serious institutional crisis. They sought to turn an administrative matter into a political controversy, casting doubts on the functioning and credibility of a constitutional institution.
The Election Commission’s unanimous press note of September 26 has now put several of these allegations in perspective. All three Election Commissioners have reaffirmed that the major decisions relating to SIR were taken unanimously. The Commission has clarified that the letter sent to the Cabinet Secretary concerned the administrative functioning of an officer on deputation and had nothing to do with electoral policy or the SIR exercise. The Supreme Court has also upheld the declaration accompanying Form 6 for SIR.
So, what exactly was Congress trying to establish? Was an internal administrative matter deliberately projected as a constitutional crisis? Was an unsubstantiated narrative amplified to create doubts about the credibility of the Election Commission? The Commission’s own clarification has now provided the public with the facts against which these allegations must be assessed.
There is another question Rahul Gandhi and the Congress leadership must answer. If SIR is acceptable in Kerala, where Congress leaders themselves have acknowledged its benefits, why is the very same exercise being portrayed as an assault on democracy elsewhere?
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has acknowledged that SIR may have benefited the party in Kerala by helping remove multiple registrations. Does this mean that the Congress victory in Kerala should also be questioned? Should Congress leaders who have acknowledged the utility of SIR now be accused of echoing the BJP’s position? Or is the party’s objection to SIR determined entirely by whether the political outcome suits it?
The enumeration exercise brought to light large numbers of entries relating to deceased, shifted, and absent electors, alongside other discrepancies requiring verification. These figures underline the importance of a thorough electoral roll revision. They also reinforce the need to distinguish between genuine voters and entries that require scrutiny, while ensuring that no eligible citizen is denied the right to vote.
The Election Commission is a constitutional institution, not a political opponent. It is entrusted with the enormous responsibility of safeguarding the electoral process in the world’s largest democracy. Its decisions can and should be scrutinised, but repeatedly flinging allegations at it without substantiating them serves neither democracy nor the electorate. When every unfavourable development is turned into an alleged institutional conspiracy, the result is not constructive opposition but a politics of perpetual grievance.
There is a fundamental difference between holding an institution accountable and attempting to discredit it. There is also a difference between raising genuine concerns about electoral processes and manufacturing a political controversy every time the outcome is inconvenient. A mature democracy requires the former, not the latter.
The people of India have repeatedly demonstrated that they exercise their franchise on their own terms. Political parties must respect that mandate, whether it favours them or their opponents. Democracy does not come with a guarantee that every political party will win, nor does it permit anyone to delegitimise the electoral process simply because the verdict is unfavourable.
Rahul Gandhi and the Congress leadership must understand that the Election Commission is not an umpire they can bully, and the electorate is not an audience they can mislead indefinitely. If Congress has evidence of wrongdoing, it should place that evidence before the appropriate authorities. If it does not, it must stop treating every electoral setback as an excuse to undermine public confidence in democratic institutions.
The people of India deserve an opposition that questions the government, offers alternatives, and strengthens democratic debate. They do not deserve politics in which every defeat becomes a conspiracy and every constitutional institution becomes a convenient scapegoat.
