On Saturday, the Madras High Court pulled up the Election Commission of India for lapses in providing security to a counting centre in Madurai and for failing to take appropriate action against all the officials found to have been at fault. On April 20, it was found that a tahsildar and some Madurai Corporation officials had entered a store room in a Madurai counting centre where EVMs were stored and spent a few hours there. Candidates to the Madurai parliamentary constituency took to the streets to protest this major breach. On Saturday, the HC was hearing a petition on the issue from one of the candidates when it took the EC to task and ordered the immediate transfer of officials concerned for dereliction of duty. The court was not amused when the EC immediately transferred and replaced only two of the officials responsible without taking any action against the others, including senior police officials.

This breach was shocking in itself. More shocking was that the EC waited till being ordered to do so by the court to take action. This was not the only time the EC in Tamil Nadu had proved inefficient in carrying out its duties. In the past week, the state’s Chief Electoral Officer admitted that not one but two film actors had managed to cast their votes despite their names not figuring on the voters’ list. In effect these actors appear to have indulged in bogus voting. The CEO said that action would be taken against the officials who had allowed the well-known actors to cast their votes.

The EC has long been seen as an efficient body. It has the unenviable task of conducting “free and fair” elections  in the world’s largest democracy. More often than not, the body has acquitted itself admirably. However, the serious lapses that have taken place in Tamil Nadu, and elsewhere, have besmirched its reputation. More worryingly, it has allowed the free-ness and fairness of the polls to be called into question. It is essential that the EC takes swift action and, in a transparent manner, probes how these lapses came to take place and sees how they can be prevented in the future.