Outsiders making their way to the Rajya Sabha from Jharkhand on Saturday surprised Election Commissioner (EC) HS Brahma who called upon people to “oppose and boycott” such people. According to Brahma, a local candidate would be more appropriate due to his availability to people in times of need rather than someone who leave the place after getting elected.
“I have seen that wealthy businessmen living elsewhere come to Jharkhand and get elected to the Rajya Sabha,” said the surprised EC. Brahma was interacting with people during a conference on electoral and political reforms at Aryabhatt Hall of Ranchi University. Association for Democratic Reforms and National Election Watch organised the meet in which Speaker Shashank Shekhar Bhokta also attended. Interestingly, the green pasture that Jharkhand offers to influential businessmen has seen many outsiders getting elected on the ticket of Jharkhand-based political parties. The EC called for reforms within the political parties, a major component of reforms.
“This country needs good and accountable political parties for good governance,” maintained Brahma. Notably, 2014 Rajya Sabha elections also witnessed Prem Chand Gupta, a Haryanani, and Parimal Nathwani, a Gujarati, getting elected to the Upper House from the State. Significantly, the year 2014 could mark the onset of serious electoral and political reforms in Jharkhand and rest of the country with the Election Commission of India and independent election watch dogs ready with newer set of measures to filter out tainted candidates from the election process to maintain sanctity of the democratic processes.
Considering the bottlenecks in scrutiny of candidates in an election the Election Commission of India is likely to introduce the online filing of affidavit by a candidate before elections to the lok Sabha and elections to as many as six State Assemblies, including Jharkhand, while retaining the offline mode for furnishing details about their criminal antecedents, assets, liabilities in Form-26.
“We will get sufficient time to examine the credentials of a candidate if the affidavit is filed online,” said Brahma on the sidelines of the conference called to reflect on electoral and political reforms. Notably, the EC was concerned about the criminal antecedents of candidates mentioned by them in the affidavit filed at the time of filing nomination. As per the EC, around 30 per cent of the affidavits filed in about one decade contained information related to criminal cases against the candidate.
Meanwhile, independent watchdogs released a mobile-based application for reporting incidents of violation of model code of conduct, which the political parties are often accused of. The application helps in taking a photo of an activity and tag the photo with geographical location besides time at which the photograph was taken. The application automatically sends the photograph to the server of the watchdog which will route the photograph to the Election Commission for further action. The application created by Jaskrit Singh of Punjab Election Watch is being currently used by ludhiana Municipal Corporation for routine works in the municipal area.