Sir — Several candidates, including caretaker/former Chief Minister Hemant Soren of Jharkhand and Omar Abdullah of Jammu & Kashmir, contested from two seats in the recently held elections to the State Assemblies. It is simply a misuse of a system that such leaders succeed in their poll gamble by winning one and losing another, and thus entering the Assembly. There are also several cases (like Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the lok Sabha election) when a candidate wins from both the contested seats and thus causes unnecessary wastage of public money in the holding of by-elections.
It is shocking that adequate poll reforms to induce basic corrections in this regard have not been affected. Immediate reforms are necessary that would lead to a ban on candidates contesting from more than one constituency and/or contesting for both the lok Sabha and the Assembly seats simultaneously, because a person cannot represent more than one constituency or become simultaneously a member of the lok Sabha and the Vidhan Sabha.
It must be remembered that a single controversial vote of the then Odisha Chief Minister Giridhar Gomango against the confidence motion for the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government in the lok Sabha, had pushed the country into a costly mid-term poll.