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What's sauce for Gamang is sauce for Gandhi

Did you know there is an assembly constituency in Orissa where nobody has come of voting age between January 1998 and January 1999? And that isn't all: amazingly enough, nobody has moved into the constituency, nor moved out for that matter. There is more: the electoral rolls in this constituency are absolutely perfect, with not even a spelling mistake. Finally, the astrologers in Nirvachan Sadan have guaranteed that the weather in this constituency shall be absolutely perfect for at least one day in June.

And yes, lest I forget, there is one last fact that really sets this constituency apart from every other piece of Indian territory -- believe it or not, this is the one place where the Congress is pleading for an election in June! Not September or October, when the heat wave shall have subsided, the flood waters ebbed, and the electoral rolls been revised to everybody's satisfaction. No, the Congress insists that polling should take place in June.

Why? The reason revolves around Giridhar Gamang, the chief minister of Orissa-cum-member of Parliament for Koraput in the 12th Lok Sabha. You may remember him as the man who masqueraded as a member of Parliament while responsible to another legislative body, the man whose vote brought down the Vajpayee ministry. He needs to become an MLA at least by June. (Gamang, in the grand Congress tradition was nominated to the office of chief minister by the "High Command" without bothering to win the people's approval.) The Congress plea is that the by-election is necessary to keep the administration going in Orissa, and the Election Commission has accepted the argument.

Pardon me if I am wrong, but isn't this a clear case of double standards? The Election Commission has cited the revision of electoral rolls as the main reason why we cannot have a General Election in June. Various parties in the Opposition ranks have pleaded that the voters should not be forced to come out and queue up in the blazing heat of summer. So will all these honourable men and women care to explain why an exception is being made in Orissa?

Are they trying to say that the state enjoys unusually balmy weather? If so, I should point out that Orissa was one of the states most afflicted by heat waves in 1997 as well as in 1998. In case, everybody has forgotten, Kalahandi, which is synonymous with drought, is part of Orissa.

Is it then the Congress's case that the electoral rolls need not be revised at all for this one constituency? If so, the party has not given any public proof why this should be so.

No, it all comes back to the Congress's concern -- evidently shared by the trinity of commissioners in Nirvachan Sadan -- that Orissa should continue to be administered as before. Frankly, I am not sure why this should be so. I have already spoken of Kalahandi, scarcely an advertisement for the Congress ministry. Need I remind readers that Orissa is also the state where the famous Dara Singh has been evading the police for months on end? (Which, incidentally, is one of the reasons why J B Patnaik was kicked out of the chief minister's chair, and Gamang installed in his place.)

If the Congress is really concerned about the administrative machinery in Orissa, there is a simple solution at hand: put in another chief minister. The Congress enjoys an absolute majority in the Orissa assembly, so there is no shortage of suitable candidates. Or is the party saying that its current crop of MLAs is totally incompetent?

In any case, no matter what shifty argument the Congress puts forward, why did the Election Commission give in? Why has it made Gamang's chosen seat an exception to the rule? If the governance of Orissa is important, why is it acceptable to deprive the whole country of a full-fledged government for six months?

In the absence of any response from the three wise men in Nirvachan Sadan, I can only conclude that the Gamang luck is holding. And so it is that the Election Commission has waived aside all its own arguments for the sake of Giridhar Gamang.

I ended my last column by saying that we, the voters, shouldn't be made to wait for Sonia Gandhi's convenience. Let me amend that just a bit -- Sonia Gandhi's comfort isn't all that moves the Election Commission, so does that of Giridhar Gamang.

Is it asking too much that Nirvachan Sadan should have the same set of rules for everyone? If a June election is good enough for Gamang, then it should be good enough for Gandhi too.

T V R Shenoy