India’s Brilliant Mosaic Painted Saffron

Retired diplomat Deb Mukharji opened the conclave by referring to the background of the Constitutional Conduct Group and the Group on Federalism and Elections. He said that the initiative had emerged from concerns among like-minded persons about developments affecting federalism, elections, and constitutional governance more broadly. He noted that, since 2017, the Constitutional Conduct Group had engaged with a range of public issues, from religious intolerance to environmental degradation, and referred in particular to its work on the North-East Delhi riots under the chairmanship of Justice Madan Lokur. He said that it was regretful that the Election Commission of India had become an “object of ridicule,” that its attempts to revise lists of voters by removing names on the basis of logical discrepancies had themselves become “logically inconsistent” and that there had been mass disenfranchisement through the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls. In his view, manipulation of federalism and electoral processes appeared to be part of a broader effort to entrench the present dispensation and its political programme. He said the bill on delimitation has been “artfully twinned” with the bill to provide reservation of seats to women. He rued that India’s brilliant mosaic was being painted in saffron.