EC's best laid plans
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The great Indian festival of elections has opened on a positive note. It needn't have. As the three Election Commissioners sat down to make an announcement of the poll schedule, the anxiety was palpable. The EC has in the last few weeks suffered from an image problem. This gave rise to many questions: Would the simmering tension between the CEC and the CEC-in-waiting come out in public? Would the political parties resist the temptation to join this slugfest? Would the poll schedule get tarred with allegations of political partisanship? Fortunately nothing of that kind happened. The decision to begin the elections on April 16, four days before CEC Gopalaswami retires, was a nice gesture on the part of Mr Chawla and Mr Qureshi. They could have used their majority to begin the elections after April 21. They could hide behind the parallel of the poll schedule of 2004 for....
More about Yogendra Yadav
Yogendra Yadav is Co-Director of Lokniti and Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS). He is the Founder Convenor of the Lokniti network and in 1997 became the founder Director of Lokniti. Professor Yadav has designed and Co-ordinated the National Election Studies from 1996 to 2004 - the largest ever series of academic surveys of the Indian electorate. Prior to joining the CSDS in 1993, Professor Yadav was Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Panjab University, Chandigarh. Since 1996, Yadav has been a psephologist and political commentator on a number of television channels analysing elections. His areas of interests include Democracy, democratic theory, election studies, survey research, political theory, modern Indian political thought and Indian socialism.Recent Posts
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