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The money and muscle power play a dominant role in Indian elections. A common man with capability and honest intentions and little resources has rare chances to contest elections. The political parties only consider the “winnability” (money power & muscle power) of the person as criteria to give him party ticket. The political parties in India should be held totally responsible for this scenario and thus killing the spirit of electoral democracy.

It was a time when the votes were driven by the charisma of the candidate. But, we do not have charismatic leaders now. People are becoming increasingly pragmatic.

Money power plays a big role in our country’s power set-up. Money has a big say about how things work in a democracy.

Scope :

Functions of Election Commission:

Article 324 vests the superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of electoral rolls and conduct of elections in due and fair manner. Under articles 243K and 243ZA elections to local bodies – Panchayats and Municipalities – are the responsibility of State Election Commissions.

The power hungry Indian politicians target the simple minded and poor citizens living below poverty line, who are vulnerable to the temptations of easy money and vague promises due to their desperate economic and social The results of the Indian elections cannot be considered as genuine mandate of the people considering the prevalence of the twin evils of money power and muscle power.

Even at elections to the student unions in colleges and universities these evil practices exist.

The use of money power and muscle power in elections are the direct consequence of corruption in government machinery. So, without eradicating corruption, it would not be possible to reduce money power and muscle power in elections.

I t is known to all of us that all parties have dozens of members with criminal record in Parliament and in state assemblies.

A member is not considered a criminal unless, after a trial, the court declares him and sends him to jail. Certain members are said to have committed murder, rape, extortion, kidnapping, assault etc. but continues to be in parliament as charges are pending in courts.

Criminals in our country attract ordinary folks with their hyponotic power. Criminals get into politics to gain prestige and power. They get a chance to carry on their criminal activities if they are in positions of power.

Rampant corruption:- e.g. (1). 2G Spectrum allocation (estimated loss Rs.1.76 lakh crore) (2). Coalgate Scam (coal block allocation) (3). Chara gotala (4). Mining scams. (5). Common wealth game fraud (several thousand crores)

• It should be ensured that all eligible citizens participate in voting as only 40-50%approx. polling takes place.

Compulsory voting

• Circulation of black money in the country which plays a big role in the elections can be largely curtailed by de monetising one thousand rupee currency notes and five hundred rupee currency notes immediately.

Curb Black money

Circulation

• The Right to Information Act (RTI) should be further fine tuned and stringent punishment should be given to those government officials who delay and manipulate the information sought by the citizens under RTI Act. The citizens should be encouraged them to seek information under RTI Act from the government whenever needed by them without any sense of fear.

Fine tune the RTI ACT

• Election process should give a choice to reject all contesting candidates and if that option gets majority vote, then no candidate will win. In such a situation, repeat election should be held immediately and all rejected candidates should be barred from contesting the repeat election.

Right to Reject

• A special permanent fasttrackcourt must be constituted to look into all disputes relating to elections at the state and central level , and this court to have the authority to ban criminals and dishonest people from contesting in the elections.

Need for fast track court for

election disputes

• No MLA or M P should be permitted to contest elections more than two times.T he American law that no one can become President more than two times is a commendable step and similar regulations should be followed in India also.

Deny permission

for more than two

terms

• Political parties should be made more accountable . They should conduct internal audits of their finances to demonstrate transparency. The Election Commission does not have any visible or effective supervision in this regard at present.

Insist on internal democracy in

political parties

• The MP and MLA constituency fund should be scrapped immediately, as there is lot of evidence of this being used for corrupt practices and generation of black money which is used during elections in India also.

Scrap MP/MLA constituency

fund

• Election Commission should introduce finger print based electronic voting machines, which would count a vote to be legal only when the finger print of the person matches with the one in the database. This would completely eliminate bogus voting. This would not be as difficult as it is thought now, considering the growth of information technology.-This can sustain

Introduce finger print electronic

Voting

• Election Commission should also consider ideas like online elections for allowing voters to vote online. This would not only ensure greater participation but would also ensure fearless voting , especially in terrorist dominated and violence prone areas.-This can sustain

Permit online voting

• Since the aspiring candidates are to make policies for country and state, they should be atleast graduates so as to understand the basic fundamentals of the policy proposed.-This can sustain

Minimum Education

• The cost of election campaign should be brought down by encouraging campaign through print and visual media in the form of advertisements, for which concessional charge should be fixed by the government and part of the expenses should be subsidized by the government. Maximum number of public meetings that can be conducted in each constituency by each party should be fixed and posters should be banned. Anybody violating these regulations should be barred immediately from contesting elections.

Bring down cost of election campaign

Political parties do not want a ban with regard to the choice of criminals to contest elections. They argue that until charges are posted in court, a person should not be considered guilty.

It has become clear in the past that it is impossible to prevent money and muscle power from making an impact in the poll scenario. Time and again, the proposal in this regard has been rejected by all political parties. Few years back a bag full of currency notes was brought into parliament to establish a corruption among political parties.

In UP, it was found money was being carried in police vans. The police too are helping politicians. The Election Commission cannot do much to stop lavish expenditure by candidates.

When there are hundreds of members in Parliament and state assemblies with a criminal record, it would be unrealistic to expect political parties to stop giving tickets to murderers, rapists, extortionists, kidnappers.

A general election to Lok Sabha is a gigantic exercise. It has been said that holding general elections in India is equal to holding them for Europe, United States, Canada and Australia all put together. Statistically, the number of voters in India is in excess of 600 million (60 crores). The number of polling booths all over the country adds up to about 900,000 (9 lakhs). To manage these polling booths about five million election personnel and an additional two million security personnel have to be mobilized. Taking State and local elections into account, the figures become more staggering. Today, India is unique in having upwards of about 3.2 million (32 lakhs) directly elected representatives of the people spread over various tiers of governance.

All the political parties have joined hands together for saying no to application of RTI Act to their parties.

It is unfortunate that the governments do not seem to have the will and segacity to accept this extremely important suggestions. The political parties will not allow this thing to happen.

The constituency found power given to MP’s and MLA’s is very difficult to withdraw.

The election commission is totally dependent on the government machinery during the time of conducting polls and the government is run by political parties.

Government to set up special courts for speedy disposal of criminal cases against politician so

that they do not find a way into parliament, But again it is the politician in parliament political

party in power to bring a bill on this.

Misuse of RTI also needs to be checked and stringent measures taken against defaulters.

The voters can be asked to file a proof of voting like IT return to ensure compulsory voting

Election Commissioners should maintain a data bank/record of the voters they have educated and send to the CEC. They should be given incentives for this kind of work.

Free and compulsory education upto high school is a step forward to educate voters

Establishment of fast track courts for election disputes can be easily done by the government.

Finger print electronic voting machine can be easily procured to ensure genuine polling.

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Articles of - ‘Times of India’.