In principle”, the Election Commission is said to be eager to cover up all the statues of UP CM Mayawati, and of elephants, her party’s election symbol, as the state moves closer to election time and the model code of conduct takes effect. If the principle were to be put into practice, our no-nonsense poll body may just find that it simply doesn’t have enough observers to go round.
This is not only because statues of the chief minister — perhaps only a few fewer than the voters in the country’s most populous state — abound. On how many of them can the venerable EC keep tabs? Besides, some statues, at 25 metres high, would need staggering amounts of material to obscure. Mobilising such quantities may be beyond the EC’s remit.
The point really is the obliqueness of the EC’s logic. If the statues, meant to be a likeness of the CM, are seen as an unfair inducement to voters, then surely Ms Mayawati in person may be treated as the unfairest of all inducements. Should the CM then retreat behind the veil at election time? The same logic doubtless holds for the jumbos (the BSP symbol). You may clothe them in statue form, but what about the real ones pressed into poll duty? And how about a party whose symbol may be the ubiquitous bicycle, or the one that seeks to make its pitch with the aid of the open palm?