After the Lok Sabha elections of 2019, nine working groups comprising of Election Commission of India (ECI) officials and State electoral officers were constituted, who have submitted a report on February 18.
The report contains recommendation for putting a cap on campaign expenditure by parties and candidates and bring in greater transparency in the domain. The ECI report has also suggested bringing in the social media and print media under the silent period ambit which is 48 hours before polling and online registration of voters at the age of 17.
But it seems the unsavoury practices prior to, and during elections and the their ramifications post elections are far from being controlled by such limited measures. It is an open secret that the first three general elections were held in a free and fair manner, but a degradation of electoral ethics and standards came into light in 1967, during the fourth general elections. And surprisingly, the electoral process which is the edifice of democracy has become the basis of political corruption.
The ground reality is that in every constituency, candidates spend crores of rupees for campaigning and propaganda and this exceeds far beyond the permissible limit of expenses, and this is coupled with incidents of violence, intimidation, booth capturing, etc during polling.
It is common that political parties field criminals for funds and muscle flexing to win elections and in return they are provided with political patronage and protection. The single most important criterion, that is assessed by the political parties irrespective of the ability and integrity of the candidates is, ‘winnability’ in the elections. As a result of which competent and educated candidates who can best serve the constituents fail to see a chance to participate and succeed in the process.
In a glance, under the regulations in vogue there is no limit on the amount a political party can spend in an election or on a candidate. But, the individual candidates’ spending for the Lok Sabha elections is Rs 50 – 70 lakh (depending on the State they are contesting), and Rs 20 – 28 lakh for Assembly election.
Interestingly, the EC had put in a regulation before 2019 elections saying that exit poll results could be broadcast only after the final phase of the elections were over. This was made to not let the prospective voters get misguided. In 2013, the EC expanded postal ballot voting in the country. Prior to that, only Indian staff in missions and defence personnel in a limited way could vote via postal ballots.
But the story is different now, since it has been extended to six categories of voters who can use the postal ballot: service voters, special voters, wives of service voters and special voters, voters subjected to preventive detention, voters on election duty and notified voters. Besides, political parties now need to report contribution in excess of Rs 20,000 to the EC for claiming Income Tax benefit. Further, declaration of criminal antecedents, assets, etc. by the candidates is now made mandatory and declaring of false information in the affidavit is an electoral offence punishable with imprisonment up to 6 months or fine or both.
Irrespective of what is being done so far and what is recently suggested by the EC, the challenges are manifold, like it is yet a distant dream to devise an apparatus to assure the voter that, there is transparency about the background of the candidates, to free the election processes from muscle and money power, to prohibit nexus between business and politics, availing all the citizens eligible to vote a comfortable, friendly and assured facilitation of vote casting, to assure a non-partisan role of media and efficient application of the model code of conduct.
Early this year, BJP general secretary Ram Madhav while speaking in a conference on “Indian Democracy at Work-Money Power in Politics” said, "I feel that the Election Commission has an important role. I feel that it should have its own cadre.” This indeed is an important suggestion to think about which can go a long way in ensuring an efficient way of functioning of the EC.
In a recent judgment, the Supreme Court said, “…this court was cognizant of the increasing criminalisation of politics in India and the lack of information about such criminalisation amongst the citizenry." Here the court laid the onus on political parties for publicising information on candidates who have criminal charges against them, along with the reasons for choosing them and also for rejecting others with clean records.
Besides, the direction comprised vesting responsibility on the EC to inform such non-compliance, if any, to the apex court. On this, former Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) SY Quraishi, said, “It is a step forward for electoral reforms but still halfway from cleaning up the system. They have basically culled out the 2018 order with stronger wording and time-bound compliance".
So, it appears despite all of this what the EC in its recent report has missed is, the essential suggestion to give more teeth to itself, which shall be beneficial in its fight against ‘vote buying’ and ‘hate speech’, which may include suspension of candidates to contest elections for five years or any other efficient and stringent measure.
(The writer is a lawyer and can be reached at sjyotiranjan3@gmail.com)