Click to play videoNew Delhi: The battle for Uttar Pradesh is yet to get over but the winner is clear – the Election Commission (EC). For the first time, elections in UP have been almost violence free. So, how did the EC pull it off?
“We have done well in four exams and there are three more papers to go,” says Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami modestly.
The guns have fallen silent and not a single instance of violence has been reported from the four phases of polling so far and that’s due to 18 months of planning done by the three wise men of the EC to micro manage each of the 403 constituencies.
For the first time in India’s electoral history the concept of vulnerability mapping was introduced.
A village was taken as a unit and the vulnerable section and the threat perception identified. The threat, which in many cases was the local goon or muscleman was then put under surveillance.
A point of contact within the vulnerable community was identified and cultivated as an informant who would relay information to commission officials.
“If the booth official saw that none of the people on a electoral roll had come to vote then observers would be sent to escort the community to the polling station,” Gopalaswami says.
Another loophole which political party workers have been tempted to misutilise has been the missing voters or ghost voters.
Over two million dead voters have been removed from the list and eight million missing voters, who have migrated to other states, have been identified and their names are now on the surveillance list.
“In some constituencies the percentage of the so-called missing voters are as high as 20 % and often that is the percentage difference between victory and defeat,” explains Gopalaswami.
There have been many firsts for the Commission in this election, from the use of the special software for a micro-analysis of the states previous electoral records to extensive use of CCTV cameras and videographers. All this keeping in mind what author Ruskin Bond once said that Uttar Pradesh is a world in itself.
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