Former Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi, during whose tenure elections to three Tamil Nadu Assembly constituencies were cancelled, said on Saturday that elections in south India were more influenced by money than the rest of the country.
“The frank admission is that money power in this part of the country is much more than what it is in other parts of the country. May be those things are yet to be detected [there], but it is much more visible in this part of the country. We have mentioned Karnataka, we have seen in Tamil Nadu, we have seen in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana,” he said. In Kerala, the flow of money wasn’t seen, but the poll commission had different kinds of problems there, he added.
Mr. Zaidi was speaking while chairing a session at a Consultation on Electoral and Political Reforms for the Southern Region, organised by the Association for Democratic Reforms at IIT-Madras. Former CEC T.S. Krishnamurthy also chaired a session and participated in one.
Mr. Zaidi was the CEC when elections to Thanjavur and Aravakurichi constituencies were countermanded and the by-election at the R.K. Nagar constituency was cancelled for the alleged bribery of voters. He described “money power” as the worst challenge before the Election Commission of India.
Mr. Zaidi said the ECI had drawn up a list of 60 ways in which money distribution to voters took place in elections. “To tackle the problem of money use, the power of countermanding under Section 58 (b) [of the Representation of the People Act] must be given to the Election Commission,” he said, wondering aloud, “For how long will the Election Commission keep countermanding?”
Electoral bonds
Mr. Krishnamurthy used British historian Stanley Lane-Poole’s description of Muhammad bin Tughluq’s shifting of his capital from Delhi to Daulatabad to talk about electoral bonds. “I think there cannot be a more serious monument of misdirected adventure than electoral bonds. I strongly believe that transparency has been lost and the people of India are not being taken into confidence on such measures. It is unfortunate that they are seen as the answer to the question of political funding,” he said.
Mr. Krishnamurthy also signalled his support for the holding of simultaneous elections. “If you look at the colossal waste of money in various elections and the irregularities practised by political parties and candidates, and the generation of violence and hatred during this period, I feel it is better to go for simultaneous elections,” he said.
He also said that simultaneous elections would be convenient for the ECI.
