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A Tribune Exclusive
Parliamentary panel for major poll reforms
Maneesh Chhibber
Tribune News Service
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Wish-list
- Derecognise communal parties
- Delimitation of constituencies after every 15 years
- Random reservation of constituencies, but not on caste basis
- Simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state legislature
- Yearly revision of electoral rolls
- Check foreign funding
- Debar only convicted persons from contesting
- Declaration of IT returns of candidate, kin
- Restriction on contesting from more than one seat
- CEC/EC not to accept any office once term ends
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Chandigarh, May 21
In what could drastically change the way in which electoral politics are conducted in the country, a Parliamentary panel has come up with a set of suggestions, which, if accepted, will go a long way in countering the misuse of religion and black money in the electoral process. The panel has sent its recommendations to the state governments for their comments and suggestions. The most important suggestion made by the panel, which is headed by a Rajya Sabha Member, is that political parties which encourage communalism, or even contain hints of communalism in their constitution or manifestoes, should be derecognised. Acknowledging the fact that despite a ban on political parties and candidates receiving foreign funds for their election expenses, a lot of foreign money is pushed into the country, mostly through hawala channels, during elections, the panel has also suggested that better policing of hawala operators can be the only way to check this phenomenon. In order to further verify the assets of the candidate, the panel has suggested that apart from asking a candidate to declare his/her movable and immovable assets, it must be mandatory for him/her to provide details of the income tax returns filed by the candidate and his family in the five years preceding the election. ‘‘Further, for the valuation of assets, the current market prices should be indicated and not the price when the property was purchased. Also, the year of purchase of every property should be indicated,’’ the panel has suggested. Regarding the contentious issue of allowing persons with criminal antecedents to contest elections, the panel has suggested that only those persons who have been convicted by a court should be disqualified from contesting polls. Delimitation of constituencies should be done on a more frequent basis. The committee has suggested that fresh delimitation be done after every 15 years and not 30 years as is being done now. It feels that 30 years is too long a period and the whole purpose
of delimitation gets defeated if it is done after such a long period.Regarding reservation of constituencies on caste basis, the committee has suggested that the present system of reserving constituencies on the basis of numerical strength of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe constituents must be dispensed with. Such reservation encourages unhealthy polarisation of the society, it has argued, suggesting that instead, constituencies should be reserved at random. ‘‘The whole purpose of reservation, which was to provide historical compensation to the downtrodden sections of the society, stands defeated if any polarisation or communalism of the society is encouraged,’’ the panel feels. Not only this, the panel has also suggested that candidates should only be allowed to take benefit of reservation by contesting on a reserved seat for a specified number of terms, preferably just two terms in his life. It has also suggested that there should be a restriction on a candidate on contesting an election from more than one seat. ‘‘The candidate should not be allowed to contest from more than one seat as this leads to wasteful expenditure in the form of a by-election as the candidate has to resign from one seat after election,’’ it says. In an important suggestion pertaining to the Election Commission of India, the panel has suggested that in order to ensure complete independence and impartiality of the Commission, an Election Commissioner should be completely barred from taking any other office after demitting the EC office. Such offices include contesting election to the Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha or the state legislatures. The panel has also suggested that though, given the size of the country, holding simultaneous elections to the state Assemblies and Lok Sabha would be a huge problem, simultaneous elections, if all political parties agree, would be a giant leap forward.
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