Gill is not known as an election reformer who acts with an urge to be hailed as the ultimate source of wisdom and goodness. Nor is he credited with a tendency to berate every one of hispredecessors and successors. His proposal that no party may hold office when the election process is under way should be seen only as an extension of the package of measures initiated during TN Seshan's tenure to make polls a fair exercise. A party which holds office and would choose to stay on somehow or the other cannot be depended upon to thwart any foul strategem that may give it an unholy extension of power lease. There is nothing to suggest that any party has ever acted in a fit of self-denial when faced with a question of political morality. If it has shown probity, it has done only as a compulsion.

It is normal for any ruling party to misuse and abuse office to perpetuate, at least prolong, its stint in power. Some may do it with finesse. Some others may do it without being inhibited by considerations of sophistication. Some may avoid doing things which are patently unlawful. Some others may bend or break a law in gay abandon. Any party in power is bound to try to woo voters by offering somedevelopment bribe to them just when they are to choose a new dispensation. Any official who may not work in a useful manner may be neutralised. Any facility for which others will have to pay on their own can be gainfully used by the party in power in the name of some non-existent public purpose or the other. Policemen, those in intelligence as well as those without it, are deployed, as a rule, for election assignments which are at once undeclared and unfair. Those who are not lucky to be so deployed volunteer to do any service in the hope of a more gainful assignment during the next term of the party of their adoption.

There are several lines in the election statute which make such doings punishable. Statute is one thing, compliance another. Consider for instance the use of government vehicles for the benefit of a political party during elections. The ruling party alone has such privileges. No opposition leader, even when he is poised to sweep the polls in a few days, can commandeer a government aircraftwith the full knowledge and delight that he will not have to pay for it. Not one of those prime ministers who flew government planes for their own or their parties' campaign is known to have defrayed the expense incurred on them form their own funds. That is indeed listed as an act of misuse but not one for which action will be taken by anybody against anybody.

Such stipulated missive some obvious advantages. First, politicians, particularly those who make it to power, can tom-tom about the high-mindedness that has gone into the election statute of the world's largest democracy. It is good to be known as a leader elected fairly rather than unfairly. Second, opposition parties will have a useful point for campaigning against the powers that be and, after elections, a ready explanation for their defeat. Third, newspapers will have good copy, debunking in the same old staim idiom every violation of the so-called code of electoral conduct. After all, statutes are made not only for compliance but for violationtoo.

A political calamity that may befall India's great democracy if things are disposed as Gill proposes them is that ruling parties will be deprived of their fundamental right to use and misuse official machinery for their own benefit during election time, One good way to avert that calamity is the constitutional way. The constitution provides for a five-year term for an elected government and any rule that seeks to shorten that term will be unconstitutional.

It is amusing to see politicians suddenly turning constitutionalists. It is even more amusing when their clamour is heard in the backdrop of their chronic inability in their full term. They even fall before they rise to power--through backdoors or sidedoors. the constitutional answer to them is that the constitutional provision can be amended suitably to limit the misuse of official machinery by ruling parties. Since every party hopes to grab a place in the sun now or later, every one is bound to oppose any measure that limits the scope for misuse.When the absurdity of electing to Rajya Sabha someone from Assam who has never visited that state was pointed out, they changed the law to legitimise that nonsense. When a deadline for issuing identity cards to voters was fixed, they cried hoarse in unison. When measures were proposed for non-compliance of the rules regarding election expenses, they were aghast. When autonomy of the election machinery was asserted, they became suspicious. They should have indeed lived up to their reputation for foiling any radical reform in the poll process by resisting Gill's proposal to have an apolitical administration when elections are on. The comforting thought is that things happen in spite of them. It is only a matter of time before they accept Gill's present suggestion.Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.