Claims Modi following playbook of managed or electoral authoritarianism of Putin, Erdoğan & Hasina via controlling executive power sans democratic legitimacy
Prayagraj: “The extensive scandal surrounding Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar transcends mere administrative failures or his personal misbehavior, as evidenced by documented internal dissent from fellow commissioners, obscure voter roll eliminations under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), dominance over a centralized voter database, and an appointment process structured for executive control, indicating a political takeover of the Election Commission of India (ECI). In the absence of an unbiased electoral commission, electoral triumphs lack democratic significance and threaten the future of Indian democracy,” Senior Congress leader, former AICC representative, and member of the UP Political Affairs Committee, Shekhar Bahuguna, remarked during a press conference at a hotel here on Sunday that when the ECI’s own members have consistently raised concerns about the management of voter registration, removals, reinstatements, and access to the database – coupled with the CEC’s refusal to provide complete transparency – the integrity of the process that generated Modi’s mandate is directly questioned, making it impossible to regard his electoral mandate as a genuine representation of popular sovereignty.”
When the electoral process is centralized and manipulated, as seen in the ongoing ECI issue, elections lose their fairness as a competition. They become an administrative task focused on preserving power, manipulating the democratic framework to uphold undemocratic rule. Furthermore, the opposition’s alert that flawed voter rolls result in unlawful legislative majorities directly contests the validity of every executive order, constitutional amendment, and statute enacted by this administration. The allegations of vote chori (theft) made by opposition leader Rahul Gandhi in Lok Sabha, which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) previously dismissed as mere sour grapes, have now been validated by recent disclosures. A mandate can stay legally valid, but it undermines democratic legitimacy when the public lacks trust in the referee who validated it. In simple terms, he stated that when the referee is biased, the winner’s trophy holds no moral or constitutional authority, resulting in Modi having executive power without democratic legitimacy.
Indeed, the political takeover of India’s election commission corresponds with the worldwide strategy of electoral authoritarianism refined by leaders such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Bangladesh’s Sheikh Hasina, he claimed.
Putin’s strategy was not to eliminate voting but to undermine the prerequisites for genuine competition by controlling referees, penalizing and censoring information, and weaponizing law for the survival of those in power. Erdoğan took a comparable path where elections persisted, yet the state, judiciary, media, and electoral atmosphere served the ruler’s interests, he explained during an open conversation with journalists.
Modi’s approach now seems to align with the same strategy. Instead of prohibiting opposition parties or outright canceling elections, the government seems to have undermined the electoral process by managing voter registration, centralizing database systems, and neutralizing institutional overseers. This approach transforms elections from unpredictable democratic competitions into procedural rituals, where democratic appearances are preserved merely to disguise undemocratic governance. While examining global indices pointing out India’s democratic decline under Modi, they essentially refer to the exact administrative conditions currently revealed within the ECI, he mentioned before concluding.
