While the last phase of the gen­eral elec­tions is to con­clude on 19 May 2019 and with the pos­si­bil­ity of a hung-par­lia­ment loom­ing large, there is one party which has al­ready lost the elec­tions and also the trust of the peo­ple -the Elec­tion Com­mis­sion of In­dia, er The Elec­tion Omis­sion of In­dia. 

It is not sur­pris­ing that on the eve of the con­clu­sion of the elec­tions, In­di­a’s Prime Min­is­ter has con­grat­u­lated the Elec­tion Com­mis­sion of In­dia for the suc­cess of the elec­tions, call­ing it the Fes­ti­val of Democ­racy. For those who may have missed, the Elec­tion Com­mis­sion had of­fi­cially pub­li­cised the gen­eral elec­tions 2019 as the Maha Ty­ohar -the Big Fes­ti­val.

The fes­ti­val was ac­tu­ally a tamasha -of money, man­power, mus­cle power, lung power, mis­use of au­thor­ity, muz­zling of facts, me­dia man­age­ment, me­dia con­trol, may­hem and mon­stros­ity of a ma­jori­tar­ian sys­tem.

From West Ben­gal to Ut­tar Pradesh, from Pun­jab to Mum­bai, the ECI adopted an ex­tremely se­lec­tive ap­proach, main­tained a stupi­fied si­lence on dis­sent­ing notes by one of the three Elec­tion Com­mis­sion­ers and in­ter­vened where it was not re­quired to and where it was re­quired, it chose to look the other way.

The var­i­ous clean chits to Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi and the BJP chief Amit Shah will go down in his­tory as acts of Omis­sion by the supreme elec­tion au­thor­ity. In Pun­jab, the re­moval of a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer from an on­go­ing probe of blas­phemy and sac­ri­lege at the be­hest of a pro-BJP Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal, the pro-BJP stand in West Ben­gal by se­lec­tively us­ing pow­ers un­der Sec­tion 324, the per­mis­sion to the likes of ex­trem­ist Pragya Thakur to con­tinue their ven­omous cam­paign are but few glar­ing ex­am­ples of the acts of omis­sion of the Elec­tion Com­mis­sion of In­dia.

The Model Code of Con­duct is a tooth­less doc­u­ment which has been held more in the breach than in prac­tice by the small­est player to the biggest po­lit­i­cal party lead­ers and their can­di­dates. Though this has gen­er­ally been the case in all elec­tions, this time around, elec­tion­eer­ing has reached a nadir where po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents of the rul­ing party have called the Model Code of Con­duct as the Modi Code of Mis­con­duct.

From the man­ner in which the elec­tions have been con­ducted and the way things have been omit­ted, in this elec­tion, for the World Sikh News, the Elec­tion Com­mis­sion of In­dia has de­gen­er­ated into The Elec­tion Omis­sion of In­dia.