Jammu, April 18 -- It is just as well that the Election Commission has started cracking the whip on those, who, by their intemperate statements, are queering the communal and caste divide between communities in the course of the campaign for the Lok Sabha elections.
The commission's powers are nothing to write home about but a great deal depends on how it creates elbow room within the confines of its powers which are considerable or insignificant depending upon how it exercises them and the respect it manages to command.
The Election Commission, indeed, is in the position in which the political parties for the most part have a vested interest in keeping it largely mute and ineffective. Yet, an active and interventionist EC can be a useful...