The law Commission on Thursday submitted its latest report on Electoral Reforms to the Union law Minister DV Sadananda Gowda introducing new provisions on election funding to candidates and political parties and a bar on independent candidates to contest among other contentious issues.
The comprehensive report, the second in a row on Electoral Reforms, proposed wide ranging reforms with regard to corporate funding. Any contribution above Rs20,000 will have to be mandatorily disclosed and information of any contribution below this amount too has to be furnished if such contributions aggregate Rs20 crore or 20 per cent of the total contributions received.
The Commission headed by Justice AP Shah introduced transparency checks to avoid hawala transactions by seeking name, address, and PAN details of individual donors which should be through crossed cheque, demand draft or pay order. Corporate entities who wish to fund political parties must get the resolution passed in Annual General Meeting of the company instead of the Board of Directors, the report said.
Changes were even suggested to penal provisions in cases of failure to report election expenses and file the statement with the EC. The Commission recommended that any candidate who failed to submit an account of expenses should suffer disqualification for five years barring his re-election. If a party furnishes false details, EC should be empowered to slap a heavy fine upto Rs50 lakh, it added.
In a far reaching recommendation, the Commission proposed introduction of Totaliser for EVMs to ensure secrecy of votes. Using this, parties or candidates will not be in a position to know which areas within the constituency voted in their favour, thus eliminating harassment of voters where voting trends showed negative result for the winning party. A petition in this regard is also pending in Supreme Court.
The Commission took a bold step by suggesting to bar independent candidates to contest elections. “Current regime allows proliferation of independents who are mostly dummy/ non serious candidates.” Only registered political parties will have a right to contest polls, in the opinion of the law panel.
To various suggestions received on making voting compulsory and counting NOTA votes as a basis to reject a candidate, the Commission maintained time was not ripe to accept these proposals. The Commission recommended constitutional protection to EC members at par with Chief Election Commissioner, besides issues of paid news, opinion polls, etc.