ECI gains if BJP loses Bihar

Election officials attend a training session ahead of the Bihar Legislative Assembly election in Patna on October 10. PIC/PTI

The Election Commission of India should hope the Bharatiya Janata Party doesn't propel the National Democratic Alliance to power, as it did in the 2020 Bihar Assembly elections. Only this outcome can arrest the ongoing freefall of the ECI's credibility, tellingly captured in a survey that the Lokniti and the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (Lokniti-CSDS) conducted in five states and Delhi in August.

The Lokniti-CSDS survey showed that the number of people who reposed "high trust" in the ECI dipped from 57 per cent in 2019 to 17 per cent in 2025 in Madhya Pradesh, from 56 per cent to 21 per cent in Uttar Pradesh, from 60 per cent to 21 per cent in Delhi, from 47 per cent to 35 per cent in Assam, and from 57 per cent to 35 per cent in Kerala. Only in West Bengal did the number of those having high trust in the ECI fall marginally, from 48 per cent to 42 per cent.

The erosion of the trust in the ECI was the severest where the BJP is in power - Assam, UP, MP, and Delhi - and marginal in West Bengal, which the Opposition rules. Kerala was the only exception to this trend: an Opposition-ruled state, yet the trust in the ECI plunged. The erosion of trust, nevertheless, suggests the popular faith in the ECI hasn't completely disappeared, holding out a sliver of hope that it can still refurbish its image.

Worryingly, though, the survey showed that those who had "no trust" in the ECI grew from 11 per cent in 2019 to 31 per cent in 2025 in Uttar Pradesh, from 11 per cent to 30 per cent in Delhi, from six per cent to 22 per cent in Madhya Pradesh, from six per cent to 17 per cent in Assam, and from 10 per cent to 24 per cent in Kerala. Only in West Bengal did this metric actually dip, from 11 per cent to eight per cent. It's alarming that nearly one-third to one-fifth of the electorate in key states has no trust in the ECI.

Again, the rise in no trust was higher in the BJP-ruled states than in West Bengal. It would seem the BJP's triumphs and above-par performances are being ascribed to elections not seen as free and fair, which the ECI is supposed to guarantee. Does West Bengal's trust in the ECI remain intact because the BJP's tally of 24 Lok Sabha seats in 2019 fell to 12 in 2024? Has Kerala's distrust in the ECI grown in tandem with the BJP's vote-share rising there from 15.64 per cent in 2019 to 19.24 per cent in 2024? Tricky questions, these.

It isn't without reason that trust in the ECI appears linked to the BJP's electoral performance, for the appointment of its commissioners is controlled by the Narendra Modi government. Not too surprisingly, the Lokniti-CSDS survey found that 21.7 per cent of respondents believed the ECI was "completely" and another 31.4 per cent thought it was "somewhat" under the government's pressure. The decline in the trust in the ECI suggests people believe it acquiesces to the government's pressure to favour the BJP.

A BJP victory in Bihar would further erode the ECI's credibility, not least because its Special Intensive Revision of Bihar's electoral rolls was seen as a design to disenfranchise voters from marginalised communities. That this didn't happen to the degree it was feared was largely because of the Supreme Court's interventions. But even Bihar's final electoral rolls are littered with voters enrolled more than once, and cite addresses either invalid or non-existent. The number of the voters falls far short of the adult population, and the proportions of women and Muslims on the voter list don't tally with their share in the state's population.

The ECI will likely blame Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for the erosion of the popular faith in it. Yet it has shied away from conclusively disproving Gandhi's charge that in Karnataka, citizens were sought to be illegally deleted from the voter list of the Aland Assembly constituency, and added to that of the Mahadevapura Assembly constituency more than once. Similar allegations regarding the manipulation of Maharashtra's electoral rolls remain inadequately investigated.

There's no reason for the ECI and the government to behave in the manner of thieves, concealing or wiping out evidence that the people, in deference to their constitutional status, would treat as genuine errors. For instance, when the Punjab and Haryana High Court ordered the ECI to hand over the CCTV footage of the Haryana Assembly polling day to lawyer Mehmood Pracha, the Modi government amended a rule and denied it to him - and all others in the future. The ECI also issued a directive that the CCTV footage of the entire electoral process should be retained for just 45 days, down from six months to a year. These decisions have made the ECI's intent suspect.

A BJP victory in Bihar would create the impression that it's impossible to vanquish the party as long as the ECI is perceived to favour it. It would gradually demoralise citizens into disengaging with the electoral process, paving the way for a quasi-one-party democratic system. A BJP loss, conversely, could stall the freefall of the ECI's credibility.

The writer is a senior journalist and author of Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste
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