Election commissioner Arun Goel’s resignation, weeks before the Lok Sabha elections are due with no clear reasons communicated, has once again cast a cloud on the transparency and functioning of the Election Commission of India.
Earlier this month, the V-Dem (or Varieties of Democracy) report stated that India dropped down to an electoral autocracy in 2018 and remained in this category till the end of 2023. More worryingly, under its clean elections index, the report said that India was among 18 countries in which the indicator for free and fairness of elections deteriorated substantially and significantly.
12/03/2024