ELECTORAL
REFORMS- CHALLENGES AHEAD.
Prof.
Joseph K. Alexander
India is the largest functioning democracy holding
regular elections for the Parliament, Rajya Sabha, State Assemblies and local
self government bodies. World is amazed by these systematic, regular and
peaceful periodical elections. Despite, Election Commission is faced by certain
challenging issues in the conduct of these elections. It is worried as to how to
make the elections fairer and free, so that even the most marginalized in the
society can cast his vote without fear and as his right. Of the many, I attempt
to cite three issues.
1.
Unfair
role of unaccounted money.
With the phenomenal rise in the number
of the citizenry in each State the nations have moved from the direct democracy
concept of the 6th century BC Athens and Sparta to elected representative
parliamentary democracy of Britain and now India. In India a parliamentary
candidate has to meet and woo over a million voters in his constituency spread
over the length and breadth of it. He has to move quickly within the limited
number of days from corner to corner meetings to address them, personally meet
each voter to persuade him/her to vote for him, give his photo, pamphlets about
his political promises and leave remember cards at their doors. This is a tall
order requiring paid army (voluntary?) of workers, vehicles, printed material, and
microphones and so on. Election campaigning is very expensive. So he has to
raise by hook or crook money and receive it from businesspersons and corporates
(for whom this is investment for out of priority benevolence from authorities
thorough the MPs) to be spent as unaccounted amounts. Thus it is our would-be
MPs and MlAs that originate corruption and create a parallel black money
economy According to transparency International India is one of the most corrupted
country with 124th rank among the 175 countries evaluated.
2.
Criminalization
of politics
With the unaccounted massive money power and muscle
power “note for vote” bribing, rigging, intimidation of voters, impersonation,
providing conveyance, paid media coverage and even maintaining goonda squads to
snatch ballot papers, ballot boxes, caste & religion based candidature and
voting and creation of chaos and riots
are rampant. Mistakes in the ballot paper used to be a trigger for trouble. Thanks
for the electronic voting machine which solved many of such problems. What
shall we do overcome this criminalization processes?
3 Criminal MPs and MLAs.
Many
of the sitting elected representatives have criminal background and pending
cases in the courts. How to purge them from the Parliament and State Assemblies?
Vorha Committee reported in 1993 the nexus between criminal gangs, police,
bureaucracy and politicians. In 2009 Association for democratic reforms
reported 15 % of the candidates in the general election are criminals with
pending cases in the courts... This is true of all political parties big and
small.
A,
Can we prevent them from contesting the elections? How?
B, What about the sitting criminals of the
elected bodies? How to purge them?
C. How to prevent selection of
candidates based on caste and religion?
May
we get some insights on these issues?
Free
and fair election and responsible political parties accountable to the
electorate is imperative for a healthy democracy. Politicians should honestly
work above caste, creed, religion or gender considerations. Fir this, perhaps over and above the minimum
age, some other qualifying benchmarks like academic skills, lack of criminal
background may be insisted to contest the elections
Jai Hind
END
