Minus poll reform, right to reject is meaningless

The Supreme Court's ruling on Friday that voters must be given the right to reject candidates contesting an election, is welcome to the extent that the electorate can now, on record, discard candidates just as it has been electing them since independence. In allowing the voters the right to reject through a ‘none of the above' option, the apex court has dismissed the Government's argument that elections in a democracy are meant to ‘elect', and not ‘reject', a candidate.

That had always been a specious stand, because elections are primarily about the right of voters to choose or reject. If they decide not to choose any of the candidates listed on the ballot paper or the electronic voting machine and want to reject them all, they must have the option to do so. The Election Commission of India too had endorsed the opinion. With this order, the voters can now expect to exercise the new right in the coming elections to the State Assemblies and Parliament. The Supreme Court believes that its decision will bring “purity and vibrancy” in the electoral process, and there is no reason to contest the optimism.

After all, the more options voters have the better it is for a flourishing parliamentary democracy such as ours. The court's directive will have warmed the hearts of the activists who have been waiting for the day when they could get back at the politicians by ‘rejecting' them. Those like the veteran Anna Hazare had gone a step further, demanding that the ‘right to recall' an elected candidate must also be incorporated in the electoral laws. That idea has been a non-starter due to wide differences in opinion not just among political parties but also among poll-reform activists on the legal and practical merits of the suggestion. Just as there are differences over another demand — one that the People's Union for Civil liberties, which had petitioned the apex court on the issue, has made — that fresh elections should be held in constituencies where 50 per cent of the voters reject the candidates through the ‘none of the above' option.

While the chattering class now has another stick to beat the politicians with — the Union Government had resisted the demand for the ‘right to reject' because, it claimed, the option would ‘confuse' the voters — the ruling will barely make a difference to the end result. The number of ‘none of the above' votes will not be counted. In other words, the rejection of all candidates will remain on paper, while the first-past-the-post person will still win, as has always been the case. In the absence of a provision that makes the ‘rejected' votes matter, all that the new apex court order does is to offer a medium for the frustrated voters to vent their ire against the candidates in the polling booths, nothing beyond.

Also, since the ‘none of the above' votes will not be counted — at least there is no provision to do so as of now — the number of valid votes will fall. As it is, the average voting percentage across the country barely crosses 70 per cent, and many candidates have won with less than 25 per cent of votes cast in their favour. With the apex court's order, the number of valid votes will drop and the percentage of votes that a candidate needs to be first past the post will further dip. That's not a comforting thought. The solution is comprehensive electoral reforms.