To check bribing of voters, party, corporate nexus
The Election Commission of India in a recent public meeting in Delhi has expressed concern over the growing influence of black money, fake news and data harvesting in elections as most potential threat to democracy.
Apart from these, there are also many new issues increasingly emerging such as increase in campaign expenditure, paid news, cash bribing to voters, poll related violence, use of liquor, caste and communal polarisation, booth capturing, and failure in management of law and order during elections and many more which are contradicting the very basic values of democracy that boost unfair competitions and have many ramifications over our representative governance.
The current composition of members in Parliament has shown more representation of people from moneyed financial family and about one third of the members have disclosed about criminal cases against them.
The representation of Muslim members is all-time low in 2014.Their number has been consistently under represented which is disproportionate to their total population percentage.
The 14 percent Muslim population of the country has only 4 per cent representation in Lok Sabha. Though the number of women representation is all time high with 11 per cent since 1952, but still much less than the desired 33 per cent.
The total national polling percentage of 2014 election was 66.38 only. The percentage of voting out of total voter has increased from 59.7 in the year 2009. In the prevailing scenario, about 34 per cent of voters are absent in voting.
These are some of the matters of concern to strengthen the largest democracy of the world in order to make it more inclusive with principles of equal values of each vote.
There has been continued coalition politics in the country for various reasons. But the House is not representative of all voters as the popular mandate of the voters is not converted into seats in Lok Sabha and State Assemblies because of the current FPTP electoral system in practice which produces mismatch between total percentage of vote polled and percentage of seat share by respective political parties.
The present ruling party has 31 per cent of the vote share but 52 per cent of the seats. The Congress has 19.31 per cent of the votes but only 8.10 per cent of the seats which is lowest in history. The other political parties have vote share of 49.69 per cent whereas their seat share is only 39.96 per cent.
The neighboring countries of South Asia are in practice of different electoral systems. Countries such as Nepal and Sri Lanka have adopted mixed Proportional Representation (PR) system of election to make the representation more inclusive and Pakistan also, along with FPTP, adopted PR to elect women and non-Muslims in the national Assembly.
There is an urgent need for electoral reforms at both process and structural level with active involvement of the Election Commission, the Government, the political parties and above all, the voters /citizens of the country.
As a step towards reform, the Election Commission must come up with model code of conduct for political parties that will be enforceable under provision of law by amending the Representation of the Peoples Act.
A special session of the Parliament has to discuss the election reform issues. And at people’s level, in order to promote the democratic practices among the voters, there must be more political education to the masses to ensure that while they are choosing their representative for governance of the nation, they should not be swayed by any family, group, and caste or religious interest or make a decision by taking bribe, cash and liquor.
The national interest must be the top most priority of the voters of the country and they must realize that through proper voting they are contributing to build a nation of their choice.
It must be compulsory for each political party to impart political education, democracy and electoral systems, especially about constitution to all its members.
It is also being suggested by social movements that political parties must adopt the policy of affirmative action within the party in line with constitutional provisions by providing proportionate space to women, religious minority and other caste oppressed marginalised sections in party leadership and decision making bodies to avoid the emerging caste and religious outfits.
Global experience shows that the adoption of inclusive representation policy within the party will bring larger change in electoral representations of the poor and marginalized sections.
The Law Commission has recommended for enactment of provisions requiring for political parties to maintain accounts and have annual audit of accounts to be filed before the Election Commission along with ensuring regular party elections and maintaining transparency and all democratic values within the party structure and policy decisions as a public body. This has to be discussed in the Parliament to bring necessary enactment to be enforced by the Election Commission.
It is important for a democracy that political parties must adhere to inter party equality in their functions and maintain transparency at all level in organisational management and public funding.
In order to counter black money, the State funding of political parties or candidates for contesting elections has been demanded by many for a long time and also to minimise the unequal competition among candidates of different background as the financially powerful candidates played much bigger role than party and candidates from poor financial background and financially weak parties have very less chance to win because of poor performance in campaign mainly due to lack of finance.
Parties generate election funding from corporates through election bond and direct donations from outside. The corporates are not just making financial contributions, but also own the propaganda media, both print and electronic, which build public opinion in favor of parties and candidates. The poor and illiterate voters in backward areas are more prone to misinformation campaign.
Therefore State funding of political parties is in vogue in many countries of the world which India can follow.
The idea is not new to India as Prof KT Saha, Member, Constituent Assembly, had proposed that election expenditure should be borne by the State. Later, the Dinesh Goswami Committee on Electoral Reform in 1990, Indrajit Gupta
Committee on State Funding of Elections in 1998, Second Administrative Reform Commission,2008 and Law Commission report on reform of electoral laws in 1999 have extensively referred to the issues of State funding. Dr SY Quraishi, former Chief Election Commission, also had argued in favour of State funding to political parties as one of the solutions to counter excessive campaign expenses out of black money and make scope for all parties to reach to the voters by using State owned print and electronic media with equal scope to all candidates without discrimination during elections.
Many Left parties have been demanding State funding to reduce the dependency of political parties on corporates to meet the election expenses. The Election Commission has to work out the modalities of such funding in the context of India considering the local situation.
There are countries such as Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Brazil and many others who have adopted State funding in many ways.
The International Institute of Democracy and Electoral Assistance of Sweden reports that out of 180 countries of the world, about 80 have provisions of State funding based on votes obtained by the parties, mostly being in practice in Europe and Asia.