Hyderabad: “Ask Congress leader C.P. Joshi to speak about the value of one vote. In Rajasthan Assembly Elections of 2008, the former Congress minister, Mr Joshi, lost to Kalyan Singh Chauhan by one vote.

Turned out, Mr Joshi’s wife had not voted and he confided later that his wife and daughter were at a temple on the polling day,” recalled former chief election commissioner S.Y. Quraishi speaking at the session “Indian Elections” at the HLF on Monday.

This incident, Mr. Quraishi said, teaches us “Even one vote is important and that on the polling day, the most important temple is the polling station.”

Mr Quraishi spoke at length about moving towards being a better democracy with measures like curbing illegitimate poll expenditure.

When people blame the EC for all the flaws, they don’t realise the commission can do only so much in a period of 30 days, he said. “The crores that are collected to conduct elections is not a free lunch. The politicians pay it back in various forms and favours,” Mr qurashi said.