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As much as a democracy needs citizens to elect their leaders, it also needs a diverse set of candidates, apart from those backed by national parties, to contest elections. With this in mind, the district collector’s office in Jalgaon started a nomination facilitation centre which assisted people in filling nomination forms.
“Several people want to contest elections but sometimes complications are daunting to the aspirants and they are apprehensive of forms being rejected over the smallest error,” said Ayush Prasad, district collector of Jalgaon. “This is a big concern for potential candidates who are not backed by major political parties which hire lawyers and have well-oiled machinery to facilitate the nomination process.”
To ease the nomination process and make it more accessible with digitisation, a nomination seva kendra was started, where the four step process was carried out in four rooms. Explaining further, Prasad said, “The Election Commission does not expect a pre-scrutiny of nomination forms so that nobody is denied the right to file a nomination. So we were already careful about not scrutinising the form. The approach was more of counselling rather than an authority evaluating the form.”
Jalgaon, with two parliamentary constituencies — Jalgaon and Raver — received nomination forms from 38 candidates, of which only three were rejected.
Raver received 45 forms from 29 candidates, and after scrutiny, four forms were rejected. For Jalgaon constituency, 24 forms were received of which three were rejected after scrutiny.
“Clerical errors can be ignored but statutory provisions cannot be,” said Specified Assistant Returning Officer, Raver, Sanjay Gaikwad. The most common mistakes candidates make are to do with which parts of the form need to be filled, using serial numbers that are outdated, instead of accessing the latest rolls online and so on, he said.
The Centre plays an important role in familiarising candidates with the checklist of required forms and documents needed for their form to be accepted.
If a potential candidate feels that their first nomination form has an error, they can fill another one. This way, they are allowed to file up to four nominations.
“The intention of the ECI is that forms are not rejected merely on technical grounds so we ignore clerical errors like simple spelling mistakes, but if there is a statutory requirement then we cannot ignore that,” said Gaikwad. “For example, one form was rejected because a certain affidavit submitted by a candidate was not on a Rs 100 bond paper as required. By the time the candidate could rectify the error, the scrutiny was over.”
