The 2024 Lok Sabha election will see almost 100 crore voters being eligible to cast their vote. The Centre for Media Studies that comes up with election spend estimates says the money spent will be $14.4 billion (over Rs 110000 crore), a figure at par with the amount spent on US Presidential and Congress races in 2020. This will be double the $7.2 billion that they say was spent on the 2019 elections. Over five million electronic voting machines are set to be employed across one-million-plus polling stations during the exercise.These are all staggering numbers from an election that is to be conducted across the length and breadth of what VS Naipaul colorfully and bombastically called a land of million mutinies.So, when Rajiv Kumar, all of 64 years, came to announce the dates when India will hold its biggest-ever election till date, he would have been forgiven if he had his moments of distraction. But two years into his job as Chief Election Commissioner, Kumar was in his elements.Reeling numbers, remembering Rahim and ribbing politiciansFriends, he called out the assembled media folk, and sallied forth. He called the upcoming elections a festival. He reeled out numbers that made for an interesting snapshot. ‘96.8 crore people are eligible to vote in the Lok Sabha polls. 1.82 crore of them will be first timers. 19.74 crore are in the 20-29 years age bracked. 82 lakh are above 85 years. 2.18 lakh are centenarians. 88.4 lakh voters have disabilities. And 48000 are transgenders.’ He spoke of combating the four Ms — muscle power, money power, misinformation, and Model Code of Conduct (MCC) violations — and expressed confidence that the personnel at his command (15 million of them during the elections) will be able to rise up to the challenge. Kumar quoted Gandhiji’s ‘Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary’ while emphasising the need to quell hate. He quoted a Rahim doha on why the thread of love must not be snapped and to underline campaigning in the right spirit. There was a reference to the famous Urdu poet Bashir Badr too: “Dushmani jam ke karo, lekin yeh gunjaish rahe, jab kabhi hum dost ho jaye toh sharminda na ho.” A rough translation would be: Be sworn enemies if you wish to but let (your approach to each other be such that) there be no scope of being ashamed whenever the need arises for you to turn friends.Kumar even gently ribbed the politicians.Inclusive and hitting all the right spots, all this certainly was.Invoking the spirit of TN Seshan?He did not stop at just that, going on to warn in his own gentle way that there was no space for hate speeches, foul language and smear campaigns. What you have seen till now is us issuing moral censures, he said, adding that, “Now the time is, during these elections, to go beyond advisories and take concrete action.”Even the high and mighty will be held accountable if they crossed the red line, he would say later.Were these mere words or is there an inner TN Seshan in him whom India could see in action during the 82 days across which the polls, the biggest of his career, are to be held and results declared?For that something of the man.A man with a love of the heightsRajiv Kumar is a retired 1984-batch IAS officer from the Jharkhand cadre. He spent the majority of his working life dealing with money matters. More than six of these were in the Modi government before he retired as the Finance Secretary in February 2020.His peers recall Kumar as as an upright officer and a good technocrat, someone who did the job assigned to him with sincerity. A junior remembers him as “very hardworking. Friendly and jovial too. I don’t remember him ever getting annoyed in office.”The man radiating calm has also looked younger than his years always — something he once told journalists he owed to his love for squash.Kumar has exhibited a soft corner for poetry, classical and devotional music, dotes on his two daughters (as a proud father and close friend) and loves to go trekking.It now remains to be see how high climbs in the biggest test of his career. The money line that he has drawn — Rs 90 lakh per candidate in Lok Sabha elections — will definitely be breached. Does he have it in him to at least stop the other red lines he has drawn being violated? In the answer to that will we have a measure of the man, our 25th Chief Election Commissioner.The curious case of Mayawati and the Dalit voteAs bond party comes to an end, once-anonymous donors maintain eerie silence
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