Substantial reforms to the system of elections are needed to give every qualified voter an effective opportunity to cast his or her vote freely and fearlessly. Some tentative ideas.
Class-dominated, communally charged, lucre-lavished elections, which grant adult suffrage but nominally, defile and dilute to the point where democracy may well vanish. The Indian Republic has a phraseologically proletarian, compassionately profound tryst with a socialist, secular, egalitarian destiny. But the have-nots are rapidly losing faith in the representative pretence of popular government. The millions of people who make up the weaker sections have no voice or spac e in state power. The billionaires who are the foreign and native “proprietariat,” manipulate the major political parties through the media and with money power. Through mega-propaganda, political pressure, and mafia-operated minimal votes, they rule the state and run its instrumentalities.
This is not government by the people. If adult suffrage and its majority presence through the polls are to be a reality, considerable legal and strategic changes are necessary with accent on the weaker sections. Our colossal system is extravagantly expensive. It alienates the indigent and the backward from candidature or choice of candidates or decisive voting influence. The democratic drapery of our Constitution stands shrunken, with the commitment to Swaraj, national unity, and patriotic fraternity eclipsed. What prevails is tycoon raj and foreign investment craze, five-star lifestyle addiction, captured by the west-intoxicated culture of the exploitative creamy layer with a capitalist kink.
A transformation of our social order, true to the vision of the Constitution, is the dynamic mandate in election jurisprudence. Radical ballot operations through cost-free facilitatory projects are essential. To give every qualified voter an effective opportunity to cast his or her ballot freely and fearlessly, substantial reforms have to be wrought.
To begin with, the very composition and appointment of the Election Commission must reflect the independence, authority, and functional competence of the instrumentality, which should enjoy plenary power to direct and determine every issue relating to the nation’s elections.
The present provision regarding the removal of the Chief Election Commissioner equates him or her with a judge of the Supreme Court. But the appointment is by the President of India, which means it is by the Prime Minister. If the appointment of the Election Commission is by a political body like the Union Cabinet, its freedom of operation is prone to biases. Its decisional impartiality will be a dubious expectation and so too its functional neutrality. Hence it is only fair that the Chief Election Commissioner and the other members of the Election Commission are chosen by a high-level committee that includes the Chief Justice of India, the Leader of the Opposition (in the Lok Sabha), the Speaker, and the Vice-President. When the Commission acts with arbitrary theatricality or political partiality, correctional jurisdiction must be vested pro tem in a body comprising the Chief Justice, the Comptroller and Auditor General, and the head of the Union Public Service Commission. These are tentative ideas, not final assertions.
The representative credentials of the MLA, the MP, and the Legislature itself demand effective strategies whereby every suffrage holder is able to exercise his or her ballot with facility. But many may be in hospitals, under judicial remand, detained without trial, and so on. They should not forfeit their ballot since they are faultless on this count. So the Returning Officer must provide mobile polling officers who collect ballots from such handicapped voters. The categories that should be afforded this facility should be determined on the basis of local conditions, physical disabilities, and other situations. The focus is on every voter using his ballot. Voting is a duty, and wilful default must be made an offence.
If the constituency is to be heard in the House, the winner must enjoy the support of at least 50 per cent of the votes polled. Every poll, to be authentic, must in the final count by the Returning Officer disclose at least 75 per cent of the total number of voters in the constituency who have participated. If the figure is less than that, a fresh poll should be held within 10 days. If there is still deficiency, the votes polled will be treated as sufficient.
The Commission must have special police officers to invigilate compliance by parties of the rules and regulations to obviate corruption, extravagance, commercialisation, communal canvassing, bribery, and so on.
Proportional representation
In this context, political pundits and constitutional jurists may well consider the use of the system of Proportional Representation (P.R.) as against the first-past-the-post system that India has adopted. The advantage of P.R. is that every party securing a certain percentage of votes will have a voice in governance. P.R. ordinarily means “any system of voting designed to ensure that the representation of voters is in proportion to their numbers.”
In the list system, the number of candidates on a party’s list who are elected depends on the proportion of votes they receive in national elections. In the single transferable vote system, votes are cast in multi-member constituencies. An ordered preference for all the candidates can be expressed on the ballot paper, votes being transferrable from one candidate to another to enable them to gain the necessary quota to be elected. Most West European countries (but not the U.K.) employ the P.R. system. The case against it is that it produces unstable coalitions, and breaks the bond between MPs and their constituencies.
In order to accommodate P.R., the basic structure of our Constitution may require fundamental changes since the Cabinet system with a ceremonial President proceeds on a different jurisprudential foundation. A national debate must precede the P.R. project being considered.
Our constituencies are large but our people are poor. Therefore, certain concessions and facilities must be made to enable the poorer sections to participate in the elections. Free nominations without deposit in proven cases of impecunious candidates must be provided. Returning Officers must have the discretion to provide free transport to the polling booths. Humanism is the justification for many ameliorative methodologies favouring the have-nots and the marginalised. If every human voice has a democratic right it is fundamental that provisions are made to convert every person into a governor of the country.
Speaker Somnath Chatterjee did emphasise the need for the right to recall being part of election jurisprudence. Such a provision worked well in the Soviet Union. Of course, elaborate provisions to forbid misuse and to facilitate fair exercise should be made. There should also be a provision compelling the winning candidates periodically to report to the constituency the work done by him or her and the readiness to take measures to remedy the grievances of the people. This sense of accountability must be given legal shape, and censure in case of default must be visited according to due process.
There are other important innovations, especially to make elections clean, candidate-competent, and incorruptible. Invigilation is important from the beginning to the end of the election process. A country’s administration, socialist, secular, and democratic, must be reflected in the election process.
(Courtesy : - The Hindu)
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