New Delhi, March 3 -- The manifest concern for preserving democracy in India cannot be better exemplified than in the two recent verdicts of the Supreme Court, both authored by Chief Justice of India (CJI) D. Y. Chandrachud. In one, a seemingly minor electoral issue in the election of the Mayor of Chandigarh provoked the CJI to describe the abuse of authority by the Returning Officer as "a murder of democracy" when he found that the ballot papers were defaced by him to invalidate eight otherwise valid votes of the opposing candidate which illegally resulted in declaring the BJP candidate to be elected as mayor.

In the second verdict, the constitutional bench of the Supreme Court headed by the CJI declared the Electoral Bonds Scheme (EBS)...