:: Inder Malhotra

Need poll reforms that sift the chaff, pick right MPs

Inder Malhotra

June.27 : NOW that the country has welcomed "verdict 2009" and the second Manmohan Singh government has got going, it is time to pay attention to some of the urgent electoral reforms that this year’s election results, like those of previous polls, call for. Since the late 70s, almost all political parties have been promising comprehensive electoral reforms, but none has done anything about it or would. Yet reforms in at least four crucial and relatively non-controversial areas are needed without further delay.

The first has to do with the plethora of candidates of whom a great many are not serious at all. They jump into the fray for eccentric or ulterior reasons, such as extorting money from genuine candidates whose votes they might take away. This time around something even more appalling happened. Many big spenders among political party candidates found it expedient to have a decoy rival or two so that a part of egregious expenditure could be shown in their election returns. Consequently, of the 8,010 candidates for the 543 seats, 3,829, or over 47 per cent, were bogus, calling themselves Independents. Of them no more than half-a-dozen were elected. The enormity of this situation, to say nothing of the difficulties it creates in the conduct of elections, is underscored by a stark fact: only 264 Independents have succeeded in getting into the Lok Sabha in all the 15 elections.

No one can, of course, be prevented from contesting, but surely some safeguards against a stampede of spurious candidates can be devised. In order to file nomination for the Rajya Sabha or even Vidhan Parishads in the states, a candidate has to secure the signatures of a certain number of MPs or MLAs respectively. Why can’t signatures of a reasonable number of zilla parishad members and municipal corporators in the constituency be made compulsory for Lok Sabha candidates? All that is required is an amendment of the Representation of the People Act.

Secondly, an even more serious electoral flaw that cries out for immediate correction is the havoc that the first-past-the-post system is playing in this country in the absence of a two-party pattern and growing multiplicity of candidates in election after election.

According to available information, nearly a fourth of the members of the present Lok Sabha secured just over or just below 30 per cent of the votes polled, in some cases even less than 20 per cent. In the past, especially in states like Assam and Jammu and Kashmir, where elections are boycotted often, people have become MPs and MLAs with less than 10 per cent votes, which normally should have resulted in forfeiture of their deposits.

No wonder, the Communist Party of India (CPI) national secretary, D. Raja, pleaded only the other day for a switchover to proportional representation. Syed Shahabuddin, editor of Muslim India, has demanded that either there should be reservation for Muslims in legislatures or the proportional representation (PR) system should be introduced. With all due respect, this could be a remedy worse than the disease. For, the kind of scare about a hopelessly fractured Parliament that persuaded the voters to opt for stability would become unavoidable under a PR system. The fate of the French Fourth Republic and the plight of the Italian chamber of deputies till today is testimony to this.

Of course, some countries, including Bangladesh, have adopted a mixture of first-past-the-post and PR systems. We, too, can experiment with it. In fact, both the Law Commission and the Election Commission have suggested that a certain number of seats can be earmarked which, proportionately to the votes secured by them, political parties can fill according to a pre-prepared list.

Alternatively — and some votaries of electoral reforms prefer this — the Constitution and the law can be amended to make it mandatory for all candidates to secure 50 per cent of the vote polled plus one to be duly elected. This would mean a second round of polling in most constituencies between those getting the highest and second highest number of votes, regardless of the tally of those also in the run. This could be very cumbersome for some time but it would surely be better than what exists. Today, those elected with a measly percentage of votes strut about as "representatives of the sovereign people".

Insistence on 50 per cent plus votes would have another invaluable advantage. It would drastically reduce the influence of caste and other divisive factors in determining the elections’ outcome. Therefore, caste leaders and provincial satraps — most of them already screaming against the Women’s Bill — would oppose the proposed reform. But they can surely be contained.

The third overdue electoral reform focuses on the apparently deathless nexus between crime and politics. Thanks to the dogma "innocent until proved guilty", even those facing heinous criminal charges have been sitting in successive Parliaments and even adorning ministerial chairs because court cases against them drag on for decades.

According to National Election Watch, a combination of 200 NGOs, the 15th Lok Sabha has 153 MPs (43 belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party and 41 to the Congress) with criminal charges against them. This represents nearly one-fifth increase over the corresponding figure in 2004. Nine of the "tainted" members are included in the present Council of ministers. Of the 153 MPs with a criminal record, 74 (as against 55 last time) face "serious" charges.

Of course, a clear distinction must be drawn between heinous charges such as murder, rape, kidnapping, extortion etc, and less serious allegations. But those against whom courts of law — not the police or prosecution — frame charges of a heinous nature, as defined by the election law, have to be debarred from legislatures. Convicts sentenced to imprisonment for more than two years already are.

Fourthly and finally, the anti-defection law, so rapturously welcomed when it was passed in the 1980s, has created more problems than it has solved. Deliberately or otherwise, this law made the Speaker of the legislature concerned the final arbiter of the legality of party splits. Sadly most of them have given partisan, even perverse, verdicts. All that needs to be done is to transfer the responsibility to the Election Commission or the Supreme Court.