Bogus voters

It will be difficult to dismiss the claim that almost every polling station in Mokokchung, or Nagaland for that matter, has bogus entries in its electoral roll, be it in the urban areas or the villages. There are many reasons why elections are not clean in Nagaland today, all of which are closely related and interconnected to the other, but bogus entry of voters in the electoral rolls is one of the main reasons for dirty elections. The rationale behind inflating the number of voters in the electoral roll is obvious. What is unbelievable is how it is not detected by the Election Commission of India. Identification and deletion of bogus entries is the most viable solution to ensure clean elections, especially in the context of Nagaland in general and Mokokchung in particular. Unfortunately, nobody has the courage to speak up about this issue in public. The Clean Election Movement spearheaded by the Church should address the cheap trick of inflating the number of voters in the electoral roll by entering bogus names if it really wants to catch the bull of dirty election by its horns. The very idea of Universal Adult Franchise is negated by the presence of bogus names in the electoral roll. The concept of one-person-one-vote makes no sense in the presence of bogus names in the electoral roll. Bogus names in the electoral roll make mockery of the Representation of People’s Act. Further, almost all electoral violence that is happening in Nagaland is largely because of this. Every candidate wants to rake in the bogus votes for which they are ready to shell out hefty sums of money. So long as this vile practice of inflating the electoral roll with bogus names is not checked, there is very little scope for the success of the Clean Election Movement.

Various electoral reforms are being suggested by experts to address electoral malpractice in India and one among them is linking the voter’s name in the electoral roll with the corresponding Aadhar number. However, this suggestion as well as other technological interventions to check electoral malpractice like biometric voter verification is opposed by many for the potential infringement of privacy rights it might have on the citizens. Moreover, such interventions are not cost effective and would require the government to spend huge amounts of money. Besides, the political party in power – whichever party it may be – would not want to enact such a law that is not only controversial and expensive but also disadvantageous to them. As such, it will not be wise to expect the government to solve this problem any time soon.

The closest and most viable way to address this problem, which is the root cause of almost all other electoral malpractice, in Nagaland’s context, is for the church to intervene. The other option is for an advocacy group or activists to act on it. In both cases, however, it will require mustering up a lot of courage. Until then, we will be subjected to being governed by a government whose (corrupt) legislators were elected by bogus voters – voters who do not even exist! Here’s a cue – the authenticity of the electoral roll of a village that is approved by the ECI can be easily verified by simply comparing it with that village’s church membership register.