Chief election commissioner Kahaniyan: There are CECs, and there are CECs — no matter their personalities, their looks have hardly been deceptive

When I 'was' Gen Z, the chief election commissioner was TN Seshan. Now, here was a CEC who looked like a CEC - or that's what I thought how CECs should look like since Seshan: a cross between 70s sidekick villain actor MB Shetty a.k.a. Takla Shetty (I checked, Sheshan and Shetty were two different people), and my fellow ET Sunday Chatter columnist Anuvab Pal.

It's not that Sheshan did not smile or laugh in the just-liberalised 90s. His deep voice could easily morph from a bark to a guffaw in a jiffy. But even in my early 20s, merely thinking about him conjured up the line, 'So ja, varna Sheshan aa jayega' in my head. (Fun fact: Takla Shetty was initially hired as stunt director for Sholay, but left in a huff after director Ramesh Sippy brought in an international action team to handle the famous train sequence in the film.) On more than one occasion, thinking of Seshan stopped me from engaging in some dodgy acts that included cheating in exams, shoplifting, and nicking cash from my grandmother's purse.

Today, people are rightly getting their kachhas in a twist after learning about voters being disenfranchised - the latest instance being an investigation by the Reporters' Collective uncovering 'already printed' bulk Form-7 applications seeking deletion of Muslim voters in Karnataka and Odisha being signed by booth level officers (BLOs) reportedly under pressure from BJP booth level agents. Back then, Sheshan was getting candidates disqualified for providing no or false expenditure accounts.


As CEC, Sheshan did radical things like enforce the election code of conduct, introduce voter IDs, and cap candidate expenditure. True, all these things can be - and have been - bypassed by hook as well as by crook. But they remain a reason why guilty parties still try to hide and deny electoral hera pheri, rather than simply say 'it's written in the stars/mandate' and flaunt their ability to get away with anything.

The man who followed Seshan in the CEC's chair was a less in-your-face face. MS Gill was someone I saw as a blur in the turbaned troika of Gill, then ex-finance minister Manmohan Singh, and then-Planning Commission member Montek Singh Ahluwalia. Luckily, Gill mostly wore a black turban, unlike the other two, who wore mandatory Manmohan-Montek blue.

Gill's claim to fame, at least in my head, is that it was under his chief election commissionership that the EVM was introduced on a national level. So, every time you press that voting synthesiser, you're part of Manohar (Singh Gill) Kahaniyan.

But it was Gill's successor, JM Lyngdoh, who got the CEC post back in the washing machine on high-tumble mode. When he - and the Election Commission he headed, something important to note these days - refused to hold early elections in Gujarat in 2002, citing communal tensions, after the governor, recommended by chief minister Narendra Modi's cabinet, dissolved the state assembly, the CM insinuated that EC had done what it had done because it was 'led by a Christian'. Subsequently, spelling out Lyngdoh's full name - James Michael Lyngdoh - became a BJP 'full name and shame' parlour game.

Our present CEC Gyanesh Kumar has been helpfully blase. That is, until the Indian Express expose on reported Election Commission (dys)functioning. There's not that much you can do, really, if you look like a northerner version of former Karnataka CM SM Krishna, except be desperate to come across as a technocrat - and succeed, as coming across as a technocrat too enthusiastic about the final product (removal of bogus/expired names on the electoral list) at the cost of the process (SIR).

Opposition politicians have always been a thorn in the side of voluble CECs they find to be kabab mein haddi. For a relatively 'more protected' CEC - Gyanesh Kumar is the first CEC to be selected by a panel where a union cabinet minister replaced chief justice of India. Kumar's current situation is interesting, in that his departure may be the best outcome not for opposition parties, but the ruling one. And the slogan, 'Ek kachori do samosa, Gyanesh tera kya bharosa,' does sound so GoI-inspired, no?