The essence of democracy is people’s power; ultimate power bestowed on the people specifically in the selection of Representative to the Legislature through constitutional process of election. Democracy is therefore, synonymously identified as people’s government and the welfare of the people becomes first and last responsibility of elected government. People’s choice to extend or withdraw support to the government, political party in power or leadership depends on the accomplishment or failure of the elected government to fulfil this objective. Such is the power of the electorates, the fate of democracy lies in the hands of the electorates.
Quite contrary to the spirit of democracy the electorates in Nagaland largely abused their voting power in choosing their representative not on the strength of his principle or capability and integrity but purely on how much cash, material or brute force can be applied. Election from village to municipal level, from students’ union to hoho level up to State Assembly is characterized by same evils; they differ only in degree. Election has become such an expensive thing for contesting candidates and easiest means for making fast money by the electorates during election both of them intentionally decided to manipulate E-Roll to the extreme to serve their respective purpose. The candidate inflated the figures multiple times in his village/town to enhance his vote bank beyond imagination and the voters holding multiple/bogus voters’ list to demand cash or kind from each contesting candidate. It is an organized manipulation with full involvement of village council/municipal authority, enumerators, political parties and contesting candidates. The failure, rather routine attitude of Election Authority towards visibly unrealistic E-Roll without enforcing stringent measure at appropriate time has really hampered democratic election process for many years in the past. Given this fact tempered free, factual E-Roll is a MUST.
A positive step towards this objective is the intensive process being undertaken by Election Commission of India (ECI) to bring about factual E-Roll. The attention of Nagaland Congress (NC) is drawn to the efforts of the Election Department in Nagaland headed by Mr. Sanjay Kumar, IAS, the CEO to rectify the enormous anomalies in E-Roll. However, it may be noted with seriousness that E-Roll conducted on the basis of existing census is still questionable for reasons specified above. Census 2001 was therefore, challenged and rejected by State Government for extreme abnormality, nay distortion of population reality because sheer intention was to inflate E-Roll for election purpose. Census 2011 recorded a reverse order of population in most districts in the State and this fact endorses our contention that E-Roll must be likewise reviewed drastically to bring it down to reality.
The Election Authority must also consider the fact that over and above highly inflated census figure there will be instances where E-Roll is higher or equivalent or above the 60:40 ration of E-Roll and Census figures. For instance, a rich man opened a farm in the outskirt of a Village somewhere in Nagaland where two persons were posted to man the farm and against this farm a ghost population of 400 odd was registered in the Census. Similarly, most of the villages have unrealistic census figures as there used to be competition between the villages to have the bigger population size than the other. With the kind of the spirit of competition, the national ceiling prescribed for decadal growth at 22 % is never adhered to. Besides, multiple entries in census enumeration is rampant. These manipulations are done at the behest of mostly the rich and the powerful.
Another area of grave concern is the presence of floating population in Nagaland. There is cross border registration as citizens as well as voters in the State of Nagaland. These people hold dual citizenship in two or more states. During elections these category of people used to participate in more than one State as voters. This practice is illegal besides creating nuisance to law abiding citizens.
The NC appreciates the Election Department for detecting and deleting several lakhs of multiple and bogus voters in the State but there are still more of such kind and NC appeals the Department not to compromise with any force on this matter. The NC also appeals the local self government and concerning citizens of Nagaland to give full cooperation to the Department so as to bring about tempered free, factual E-Roll in the State.
