Flashback: 'People are afraid of Seshan sahib'

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Mrs Chander Kanta Gariyali, IAS, has served as the secretary to the  Governor and the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. Her main contribution  has been promoting women's issues in every department of the government. She has several published works.

The 1996 general elections were a watershed due to many reasons -- the most important being Mr Tirunellai Narayana Iyer Seshan, the Chief Election Commissioner, who wanted to ensure free and fair polls.

He fixed a ceiling on poll expenditure, banned the use of vehicles for transporting voters to polling booths and did not hesitate to order re-polls or re-counting if there was any doubt raised or complaints received.

Mr Seshan did not want any officer to be on election duty in the state of their allotment. So, we were all packed off to different parts of India. And as luck would have it, I was posted to Jhunjhunu in the Thar Desert, Rajasthan, where the temperature often rose as high as 50 degrees centigrade.

The district consists of places like Pilani, (a leading education centre) Khetri (the copper mine area) and heritage towns of Fatehgarh, Ramgarh, Navalgarh and Mandava.

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Jhunjhunu also forms the main part of the Shekhavati region known for its painted house and havelis. It is the hometown of the top ten business houses of India, including the Birlas, Singhanias, Goenkas, Jhujhunwalas, Poddars and Khemkas.

Booth Capturing & Seshan

Mr Seshan had insisted that we spend a week in our constituencies before the polling. And instead of one observer for each parliamentary constituency, now we were to have three. 

Escorted by my driver and a gunman, I went around the villages inspecting the polling arrangements. We had to make our presence felt among the voters and assure them that we wanted free and fair elections.

Incidents of booth capturing are often reported in Bihar, UP and other northern states. And people in many villages confirmed that these things were not uncommon in rural areas.

I was startled to learn that my driver had cast votes for seven people and my gunman for 10 in the previous election.

This made me realize that it was not a practice adopted only by anti-social elements. Here were two respectable government servants, and they had been casting more than one vote without any sense of wrong-doing.

Both defended their actions: "What is the use of everyone leaving their work to go for voting? It is enough if one person votes on behalf of his family. One leader votes on behalf of his clan and one headman votes on behalf of his village."

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There seemed some pragmatic logic in what they were saying. The area lacked water and transport facilities and many women here did not come out of their houses, so some men had to be deputed for voting on their behalf.

Similarly, if villagers decided in a panchayat to support a particular candidate, why should the entire village go for voting? One person was enough.

So this is how polling was done. No one complained. Perhaps it suited all parties to keep women out.

This cannot be called booth capturing in the sense we understand, yet technically there are instances of booth capturing when one man comes and votes for others.

However, this time the people were very hopeful that such things would not be repeated.

When I asked them why, they said Mr Seshan had made proper arrangements.

But my driver and gunmen were still very confident of casting votes on behalf of others.  I challenged them to go to their native place to cast more than one vote if they could.

After one hour, they returned with a long face. For the first time they had failed to cast votes on behalf of others. They said, "Seshan sahib ka bada jor chal raha hai.  Allow hi nahi kar rahe hai. (People are afraid of Seshan sahib. They did not allow us to cast extra votes)."

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I was happy that I would not have to write adverse remarks about the incidents of impersonation in the district.

The rural areas in Jhunjhunu are dominated by the Jat community, and the urban region by Marwaris and other trading communities.

As I traveled through the district, inspecting the polling arrangements, the name of an independent candidate, Sis Ram Ola, came up again and again.

Since Jhunjhunu had been a stronghold of the Congress, it was surprising to see an independent candidate being so popular.

In fact, Ola had been a Congress candidate. During the previous election, the party had put up a Muslim candidate with his consent. As the public was not satisfied with him, this time Ola wanted to contest.  But when the party did not give him a ticket, he decided to contest as an Independent.

Sis Ram had been active as a Gandhian worker for 50 years. He had served in the state cabinet twice, and tried to bring water to the desert area, besides having done pioneering work in the field of education.

He lived in a small house, which belonged to his father and in which he was born.

It was interesting to see that a family had flown from Bangalore to Pilani to vote for him.

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Counting was to take place on May 7. At five in the morning, somebody knocked desperately on my door. I saw a stately man, nearly 70, wearing a wrinkled khadi shirt and a dirty dhoti, unshaven with unkempt hair; standing before me with a bleeding leg.  He folded his hands and introduced himself as Sis Ram Ola.

When I tried to get him a doctor, he said, "Please don't worry. I fell down the stairs. I will attend to it later. But I have another problem now."

Three of his counting staff had fallen sick. Two of them were on the counting tables and one was in overall charge in Counting Room No. 7. He wanted substitutes to be posted in their places but the District Collector and Returning Officer had refused.

I promised to meet him at the counting centre at 8 am. Mr Tripathi, the Returning Officer, felt the request could not considered since the deadline for making such changes had passed. Moreover, other candidates could have similar problems and it would not be possible to accommodate everybody at that juncture, he said.

I told Sis Ram that I and other observers would, alternatively, act as his agents in Counting Room No. 7 and specially watch the tables where he did not have representatives. Conduct of free and fair election was our responsibility and he should trust us to ensure that every valid vote cast for him was duly counted, I said.

Sis Ram brought me some poori and baji, in a donna (leaf plate), prepared by his volunteers there. I was not sure if I could eat the food offered by a candidate while counting was still going on.  But seeing the genuine affection, common in rural Rajasthan, I accepted it.

At the end of the day when the counting was over he had won by 10,000 votes.

I heaved a sigh of relief for all the villagers who wanted him back.

During my two-week stay there, Sis Ram seemed to have found out everything about me and my tourism and cultural background. Before I left the district, he produced the officers of the tourist department before me and asked me to guide them on how to promote tourism in Jhunjhunu.

After the election he joined the Tiwari Congress and became a Central minister in the Gujral Cabinet.

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