New Delhi, July 13: Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Monday highlighted former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s remarks to then Chief election commissioner (CEC) S Y Quraishi in 2012 that the Election Commission is the soul of the country’s democracy, and said that the comment is in sharp contrast to Prime Minister Narendra Modi viewing the poll body as an “instrument to exercise political hegemony”
Ramesh said Singh’s comments made to a former chief election commissioner (CEC) that he considered the Election Commission “the soul of our democracy” has invited media attention.
“Dr Singh’s comment is in sharp contrast to how the incumbent PM views the EC – as an instrument to exercise political hegemony. Dr Manmohan Singh could never have imagined that the EC would be so completely captured by his successor and that there would be CECs who would be so brazenly and blatantly partisan that they even commit mass disenfranchisement in pursuit of the PM’s political goals,” Ramesh said on X.
“It was neither Dr Singh’s nature nor his ideology to politicise such national institutions. History has been and will continue to be kind to Dr Singh for his statesmanship and commitment to democracy and nation-building,” the Congress leader said.
His remarks came after Quraishi, in his book mentioned about his conversation with Manmohan Singh.
“I will commit suicide,” Manmohan Singh had told Quraishi in 2012 after the poll panel chief conveyed his anguish over “loose talk” by ministers on the Election Commission’s functioning.
Manmohan Singh also told Quraishi that the Election Commission (EC) is not just India’s pride, it is the soul of the country’s democracy and “if we lose that, we lose everything”.
The conversation is recalled in Quraishi’s forthcoming book, ‘India and I: A Hundred Memories, Not a Memoir’.
In the book, Quraishi hails Singh as a leader for whom constitutional propriety was not a talking point but a lived conviction.
Quraishi’s book throws light on incidents from his career, including the Election Commission uncovering Punjab’s drug crisis in 2012, an MoU that made Donald Trump and Elon Musk raise eyebrows, and how TRPs were used to shrink Doordarshan and divert its advertisement money.
Quraishi served as the 17th Chief Election Commissioner of India from July 30, 2010, to June 10, 2012, during which he introduced major electoral reforms, including the Voter Education Division, the Expenditure Monitoring Division and the India International Institute of Democracy and Election Management (IIIDEM).