Whether Pigs Have Wings

This is virtually a continuation of the article Of Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax that I had written a couple of weeks ago.

As the elections draw closer, a few things are becoming clearer and others are becoming murkier.

I have penned down the thoughts that are running through my head on the topic.

Timing of the election

The first thing that is becoming clear is that it may have been wiser to hold elections a month later. My view that it was better to hold it asap has turned out wrong as events unfold. I am outlining the reasons below

The main point is that the newly elected committee will receive charge from the incumbent committee on 31st March. One has to ask Why the delay? If they had that much time to hand over change, the election could have been held in February. Or even Early March or late January.

There are other issues which could have been resolved with such delay in a more satisfactory manner

Constitution of the Electoral College

Anybody who is desirous of contesting the elections has to be nominated to the electoral college. Indeed, it is because this was not the case in the previous election was the reason the BFI committee was not in tune with SAI guidelines and had to be disbanded to prevent de-recognition.

Another issue is the number of members in a given association. While WBBA has 1200 +, the Jharkhand Bridge Association would have around 100 members. The probability of a good candidate being available from the latter is considerably lower than the former. Yet, each association can nominate two people, both of whom have to be affiliated to the association. It is not possible for 3 good candidates from Karnataka (say) or Tamil Nadu to contest for the elections simply because of the way the elections are being conducted.

Nomination to the Electoral College

If one is not a member of the state body, it is next to impossible to intimate the state body that you would like to contest. Indeed, the Tamil Nadu Bridge Association was the only body which invited people to contest to the electoral college. All other major associations like WBBA / KSBA / MBA forebore from this practice.

The reason (excuse) given was that this had to be done in a hurry and emergency committee meetings had to be held. Further, the number of members in some associations was large (eg WBBA has 1200 +), so this could not possibly be turned around in the time one had at one's disposal.

I would politely disagree with this. The number of people interested in contesting are very few and they would have the chance of presenting their case if contested. Dissemination of information is extremely easy with the number of WhatsApp groups floating around.

One association said that, at any rate, nobody in particular is interested in contesting, so this exercise would have been superfluous. Again, I beg to differ. The whole process of getting oneself nominated even earlier was so complicated and daunting that many people preferred not to bother. Secondly, quite a few states had more than two people contesting the previous elections. At the very least, the bodies could have checked with those people before going ahead with their nominations.

I do believe that such issues would have had better resolutions if elections were conducted  even two weeks later.

Horse Trading

A third issue, which has been highlighted very prominently is the electoral college has to constitute the committee from among themselves (not unlike the papal elections). This could lead to horse trading etc.

Validity of the Electoral College per se

A fourth issue is that a considerable number of associations have not done the administrative work to keep their membership in good standing. One hears of an alarming number of stories of fancy footwork now being done to 'regularize' these anomalies. It is unfortunately not possible to 'substantiate' this because nobody who is out of order will so admit.

In Conclusion

Reluctantly, one is forced to conclude "All is not right in the state of Denmark (to quote Shakespeare)"

Please do share your comments in the space below.

Disclaimer : All opinions are entirely those of the author and are no reflection of the views of the BridgeFromHome Team.