President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States of America had nominated his old friend Felix Frankfurter to fill up the vacancy in the Supreme Court caused due to the death of Justice BenjaminN Cardozo in July 1938. He was confirmed without dissent. The Senate confirmation hearing on the nomination of Frankfurter is notable for being the first of its kind when a nominee for the Supreme Court appeared in person before the Judiciary Committee .He served from January 30, 1939 to August 28, 1962 and wrote 247 opinions for the Court, 132 concurring opinions, and 251 dissents. Widely known for his erudition, he had said “No office in this land is more important than that of being a citizen.” Believers of democracy throughout the world would agree with Frankfurter. It is worthwhile looking at the experience of the citizenry in the area of electoral politics in India.
The first General Election of 1952 had the participation of over sixty one percent of India ‘s voters. It is indeed a matter of concern that despite our country having made rapid strides in various sectors of development over sixty years thereafter, sizeable section of Indian voters has consistently behaved like king only in one respect. They have chosen not to exercise their franchise. The disconnect between citizens and elections has been too pronounced to be ignored. Voting percentage hovered between 55 and 63 percent till the thirteenth General Election in 1999. However in 2004 it plummeted to around 49 percent. In the last 60 years there has been significant involvement of the underprivileged in politics.Unfortunately the middle class that had contributed so much in the struggle for India’s independence, has become lukewarm to electoral politics.
Elections in India involve political mobilisation and organisational complexity on an amazing scale. In the 1996 election to Lok Sabha there were 1,269 candidates from 38 officially recognised national and state parties, 1,048 candidates from registered parties, not recognised and 10,635 independent candidates. Around 592.57 million people voted. The Election Commission employed almost four million people to run the election. A vast number if civilian police and security forces were deployed to ensure that the elections were carried out peacefully. Recourse to technology has been taken to bring in efficiency and economy in conducting our elections. Use of electronic voting machines has done away with the mass amounts of paper that were used earlier. Voter identity cards have made a dent on illegal voting. Number of polling booths has been increased to ensure convenience to voters even in inaccessible areas. While all these steps are in the right direction, we have been very slow in bringing about electoral reforms which are so vital to strengthen our political system
Political parties should have paid more attention to their traditional role of mobilizing public opinion and acting as a medium between people and government. There is an increasing perception that they are in the business of winning elections.This is the reason why selection of candidates is largely made on the ability to win. Candidates who are able to spend more money seem to have higher chance of win. This is also proved by the data from several elections. For example, in the 2009 Lok Sabha election, 33% of the candidates who declared assets of Rs 5 crore and above were elected, whereas less than 1% of candidates with declared assets of less than Rs10 lakh were elected.
Let us look at some of the reform measures contemplated. Curbing criminalisation of politics has been suggested through enforcement of disclosure of criminal antecedents of candidates and eligibility restriction for candidates with criminal cases pending against them. This has been opposed by every political party mainly on two premises, first that generally most of the criminal cases lodged are "false" and secondly, according to law of the land, everybody is presumed innocent until proved guilty. If such rigidity in approach persists, there is little hope that reforms in this vital sector will ever be possible.
There should be a ceiling on the expenditure that a candidate can incur during the election. This ceiling should be fixed, and revised periodically, by the Election Commission of India, without the need of any reference or recommendation to the government .There should be a ceiling on expenses that can be incurred by political parties during the election period. The elected representative should enjoy the highest level of representative-ness . For ensuring this, there is a proposal to ensure that EVMs should have an option or a button for “None-of-the-above”. This would mean that votes cast for the “None-of-the-above” option should also be counted. In case the “None-of-the-above” option gets more votes, none of the candidates should be declared elected and a fresh election should held in which all the candidates in this election are not allowed to contest. In the following elections, with fresh candidates and with a “None-of-the-above” option, only that candidate should be declared elected who gets at least 50%+1 of the votes cast. If even in this round, the “None-of-the-above” option gets the highest number of votes cast or none of the candidate gets at least 50%+1 of the votes cast, then the process should be repeated. This may appear to be a cumbersome and tedious process but it will orient the entire system in the direction of (a) better representative-ness among the elected representatives by reducing the sectarian effects of vote banks, and (b) encouraging political parties to put up better candidates.
The Election Commission has recently sought help of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) to draw up guidelines concerning the formats, frequency, scrutiny, etc. of the accounts to be maintained by political parties. These guidelines should be made mandatory, and any failure to comply with these should lead to automatic de-registration of the party. A person should not be allowed to contest from more than one constituency at a time.
Inner-party democracy within the political parties should be made compulsory by law. This law should provide for mandatory secret ballot for elections for all inner party posts and selection of candidates by the registered members. Such voting should be overseen by Election Commission of India. There should be limit prescribed for the amount of donation that a political party can accept from an individual, company, organization, or any entity. Political parties should be made legally obliged to maintain proper accounts in predetermined account heads. Accounts of political parties should be audited by auditors recommended and approved by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India and should be available for the information of the public. A comprehensive law should be enacted to regulate the functioning of political parties. There should be a provision for recall of the elected representative due to reasons like non-performance, corruption, lack of development in their respective area, inaccessibility to people. MP, MLA and Corporator local area development fund should be scrapped and the same amount of money should be utilized according to the wishes of local people with proper social and local auditing system.
The progress of electoral reforms has been slow. Elections are becoming increasingly expensive; we have not been able to prevent people with criminal records from contesting elections. It is time the citizens came out with a voluntary code of conduct to bring some order in the prevailing situation. Voters should not vote for a candidate who is seeking election to a position which he has held at least twice earlier. Instead, the voter should cast his vote in favour of a newcomer. Voters should not vote for a candidate who has been an accused in a criminal case. Voters should not prefer a candidate whose party has had no election through secret ballot. Parties who have come out with audited accounts should be preferred by the voters. Voters should not prefer a candidate who is above sixty five years in age. Candidates who have demonstrated their ability in the past in any position should be preferred. Candidate showing wealth or muscle power should not be preferred. Such a voluntary code of conduct by the electorate would hasten the process of electoral reforms. If the electorate all over the country comes up announcing their preferences on these lines, it would certainly be a befitting response to the noble initiative of Anna Hazare. Then only would the voter be really the king.
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