Admitting that elections were now mainly fought by the rich and powerful, Chief Election Commissioner H.S. Brahma said in an interview that the law, however, could not help elections become free of money power. Voters choosing the right candidates was the only way to clean politics, Mr. Brahma said. He hoped public opinion would build around limiting expenditure by parties.
While voter turnouts were growing, cleaning the voter rolls of duplicate names would raise it further, Mr. Brahma said.
The Chief Election Commissioner, in an exclusive interview talks about the electoral reforms needed for clean elections.
All states are now at 65-70 per cent voter turnout. Can it go further given migration, or is this as high as it can get?
Once the rolls are corrected, once spurious names are removed, then the percentage will go up. The numbers are not low now because our Indians are not going to vote; it is because of the spurious names. Once they are deleted, the percentage will go up by two to three per cent. Any election in 2015-16, we will have turnouts at 84-85 per cent.
The biggest challenge to all of us in any election, is the voter rolls. It’s only now, with our software, that we’re creating a de-duplicated all-India roll. The other thing we’ve started doing from March 3 is to seed the Aadhaar information with the voters’ roll. In our southern states, by the end of May they’ll finish the entire job of Aadhaar-seeding. This will ensure that the structure will be free from duplicate and spurious names.
One other thing that we are planning is for people who move to another city to be able to change their address online, authenticate with Aadhaar, and be instantly added to the new rolls. I know that so many officers tell me that they have migrated, sent an application for the name to be deleted, and then nothing happens. When [the new system] comes into effect, there will be no need to send ten letters and make phone calls.
It seems like the Election Commission can now successfully conduct peaceful elections. But the new challenge seems to be that of the influence of money in elections. Does the ECI have the tools it needs to take this on?
The Election Commission definitely has sufficient tools. It is a fact that money power plays a role in elections, but the use of money has always been there since the beginning of civilisation, and in every country. Who fights elections? Around the world, the rich and the powerful only contest elections. Earlier politicians used to fight the battle. Today even business is involved by proxy; big industrialists and multinational corporations try to manipulate the elections by supporting a party who is going to be favourable. Today elections are fought not only on political ideals or isms, but business and money is also involved. The state can give tremendous amount of benefits to the victor.
I think the citizen of this country should be told clearly that voting is not only a mere right, but more and more people if they want to improve their life and future, then they must elect the right person. We cannot make any law – law is not going to solve anything. People of the country should be told that for their own interest they must vote for the right person. This is not a one day’s job, it has to be an eternal vigilance.
One of the measures the ECI has talked of in the past to curb money power has been to impose spending limits on political parties. But the Law Commission has recommended against it.
I appreciate the work that the Law Commission has done, and there are many positive points. The Election Commission’s mandate is mainly around candidates, and our focus has to be stopping the abuse of money power by them. But I think the day is not far off, when the people will start asking why there should not be restrictions on spending by political parties. Even if there isn’t a restriction, if they give a correct account, I don’t see any problem. A political party is not a government body, they cannot maintain bureaucrats and they also have problems – maintaining an account of every rupee spent is quite difficult for them .
Some political parties don’t submit their expense statements within the time limit. Is it difficult for the ECI to enforce its rules?
We are able to enforce it, I haven’t seen much of a problem – except for a few minor players, most of them submit it on time. The problem political parties have is also that they are constantly engaged in elections. And then all the documentation is done manually so it takes time. We also try to maintain discipline.
Would it help if the ECI could make rules under the Representation of People Act?
In all liberal democracies, rule-making power rests with the government. Whether government does it or the Election Commission, the effect is the same. It’s a question of how you look at it. Why should the Election Commission have a grouse? I don’t feel it requires any debate.
Does the Election Commission need more powers to be able to clamp down on paid news? The Ashok Chavan case got shot down in the High Court.
Paid news is one area that is not only a challenge to the Election Commission, but to the country as a whole. My personal view is that more than the EC or the Press Council of India, some discipline has to be followed by the press. Today if you look globally, most of the media is controlled by big corporates and support one party or the other, and this is happening in India too. Paid news can be not necessarily paid by A or B, but driven by the media’s management too. How do you tackle that? So paid news is not easy any more to identify. In the last five years, we have seen that it has become very blurred; the difference between paid and non-paid news has become very blurred. It is going to be a major challenge. What do you do about digital technology? People canvas on Facebook and Twitter even when the elections are going on. And the law takes a year to catch up.
