While acknowledging that the chief election commissioner had expressed his displeasure after receiving a letter summoning him to a meeting meant to deliberate on a common electoral roll, the Union ministry of law and justice clarified that the said letter was meant for a secretary or representative of the Election Commission. It has been reported that in the said letter, the principal secretary to the prime minister ‘expected’ the CEC’s presence. The matter here is not about the pecking order or, indeed, about the interpretation of semantics. What is at stake is the perceived breach of constitutional privileges of the EC as well as of convention. The insulation of the EC from the executive is of fundamental importance. It is this distance that functions as democracy’s bulwark against ambitious, aggressive, albeit elected, dispensations. Under no circumstances can it be made to appear — rightly or wrongly — that the institution tasked with conducting free and fair elections in a democracy is at the beck and call of the powers that be. The merit of the rationale of the meeting is of secondary importance. Protocol and institutional privileges — autonomy — hold the key when it comes to protecting the checks and balances embedded in India’s parliamentary democracy.

What needs to be examined equally is the matter of perception. The concern for an unnecessary bonhomie between this particular government and institutions meant to be the guardians of democracy has been gathering pace for a while. Some of this anxiety is not unwarranted: the media’s enchantment with the Narendra Modi government being a case in point. The EC’s conduct has not been irreproachable either: its dithering on reining in the electoral campaign in Bengal amidst a crisis in public health had fuelled speculation about the agency’s ability to insulate itself from a bullish Centre. The latest episode, in spite of the CEC’s displeasure, may besmirch the august body further. Democracy’s guardians — courts, media, electoral bodies — must be free of the coils of the government. It must be remembered that democracy’s emasculation begins with capitulations by its protectors.