A national burden

This time, the Election Commission has estimated the great Indian roadshow of February-March 1998 would cost anywhere between Rs 700 crore and Rs 800 crore. Says Finance Minister P. Chidambaram: quot;The cost of the 1998 election is bound to be high. The price of every thing has gone up.quot;

Even more than the quot;directquot; costs to be borne by the Election Commission, the indirect, quot;hiddenquot; election expenses are the real cause of concern. Former Home Secretary K. Padmanabhaiah says that each election impinges upon the non-planned budget of the Ministry of Home Affairs, and this is never calculated as part of the official election expense. The Ministry, he said, spent Rs 93 crore exclusively on the 1996 Assembly and Lok Sabha elections in Jammu and Kashmir 8212; majority of it for airlifting and billeting para-military forces. This time too, a comparable sum could be spent for elections in the border State as well as in the North-Eastern States.

The 1998 elections have been called at a time when the issue of electoral reforms and poll funding has been churning in the cauldron. Two important developments had taken place.

One, the United Front Government appeared to be serious about electoral reforms. A draft bill incorporating the 1990 Dinesh Goswami committee recommendations was circulated to a group of ministers in November. However, the UF Government fell before the bill could get Cabinet sanction.

Secondly, recent orders of the Supreme Court asked for transparency in political spending. After a judgment delivered in April 1996, all parties were required to submit their annual audited accounts to the Government.

It is, of course, a different matter that parties are refusing to fall in line. Figures submitted to the Election Commission reveal that 90 per cent of the registered political parties have not submitted accounts to the Government. And some of those who have furnished the figures have shown their income to be quot;nil.quot;

According to Pai Panandiker, Director of the Centre For Policy Research CFPR, no major breakthrough has been achieved. The CFPR had first prepared a paper on the feasibility of state funding for the Morarji Desai Government in 1977 and updated it in 1994. In it, they had reiterated that allocations should be made to a party on the basis of performance in the previous elections and percentage of votes bagged. On the quantum of funding based on 1994 prices, the CFPR had said it would come to around Rs 220 crore. The calculation had been done on the basis of four candidates contesting each constituency working on a ceiling of Rs 10 lakhs each.

Conversely, the cost could be calculated on the basis of Rs 10 per vote, which would mean an outlay of Rs 500 crore. Assuming a 60 per cent turnout of 500 million voters, this would mean an outlay of Rs 300 crore. The fund, the CFPR has suggested should either be placed with the Election Commission or a specially created state funding agency. However, such suggestions had even been ignored by the Goswami Committee, which had recommended that the state pick up only the tab for things like fuel for vehicles, hire charges for microphones and additional copies of electoral rolls.

Thus, Panandiker says the whole question of election funding continues to languish even as costs have spiralled. quot;This time the parties and candidates will together end up spending an additional Rs 1,500-Rs2,000 crore,quot; he estimates. quot;With a falling growth-rate, this is a burden the country can ill-afford.quot; But there are few takers for state funding. quot;State funding of elections is a confused idea. It may work in countries like West Germany but India is not yet ready for it,quot; says Election Commissioner GVG Krishnamurthy. He says the abysmally low ceiling pegged in 1994 at Rs 4.5 lakh for a Parliamentary poll and Rs 1.5 lakhs for an Assembly election had forced incumbent MPs to start their term by filing a false account statement to them. quot;The ceiling should neither be too high or too low,quot; he feels. quot;If there is a realistic ceiling, the elections will assume a semi-festive atmosphere. But if controls on expenses are too rigid, elections will assume a semi-funeral atmosphere.quot;

Besides this, the irrationality of proposals on state funding can be gauged from the record number of contestants 8212; and parties. In an effort to weed out non-serious candidates, the Commission had increased the deposit from Rs 500 to Rs 10,000 for Parliament and Rs 250 to Rs 5,000 for Assemblies and was now trying to bar criminal elements from taking part in elections. The cumulative effect of this, Commission officials feel, would be that they might be able to bring down the number of contestants in this election to around 5,000-6,000.

But where will the money come for their campaigns? Says Janata Dal chief Sharad Yadav: quot;Our party had very little to give to the candidates last time and we are in for bigger trouble this time. Therefore instead of doling out funds, we will go for mass mobilisation.quot; The problem appears to be more acute for first-term MPs, independents and members of new formulations.

Says C.C. Prasad Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal: quot;Laloo Prasad Yadav has just come out of jail. You think he had time to collect funds? It is parties like the BJP alone which will go for big money.quot;

As always the biggest chunk of corporate contributions are expected to go to the BJP and Congress. Earlier this year, the Tatas announced they would be constituting an electoral trust which would also accept contributions from non-Tata firms but the EC is divided on this. While CEC M.S. Gill endorsed the idea, Krishnamurthy has been opposing it.

The idea of a business trust has also not found favour with the Confederation of Indian Industry CII. Says president Tarun Das: quot;If the parties and candidates expect to collectively spend Rs 2,000 crore on the elections, they should not expect the entire sum to come from industry. Industrial grown has fallen from 10 per cent in 1996 to four per cent this year and industry will surely be cutting costs.quot;

This warning, if anything, must send jitters to the thousands of aspiring MPs.quot;This is going to be a frugal electionquot;

Chief Election Commissioner Manohar Singh Gill expects the recession in the economy to come to his rescue, forcing trade and industry to be tight-fisted this time. Excerpts from an interview with Ritu Sarin.

Since the 1984 elections, the cost of the entire exercise has risen dramatically. Why?

The increase isn8217;t due to wastage. After all, we use rudimentary technology 8212; metal dabbas, a bit of string, a piece of cardboard, and a piece of paper of the cheapest quality. Besides these basic requirements, for 60 crore voters I have to have nine lakh polling stations and 45 lakh election staff. They are the poor babus whose daily allowance is a pittance. They do not even have money to buy a samosa.

Then, we have to spend on the movement of security forces. They travel third-class and have a little daal and roti, which any sepoy gets. So, where are you going to economise? My budget, in fact, already is very tight. If I am going to spend Rs 750 crore this time, it is absolutely the pits 8212; it is the minimum that has to be spent.

What are the loopholes in election laws that allow corrupt practices to flourish?One is Section 77 of the RPA, which talks of a ceiling on individual expenditure. Unfortunately, in 1974, a proviso was added saying that the money spent by the party, friends and anybody on the street won8217;t be counted as part of personal expenditure. This way, instead of adhering to the existing ceiling of Rs 4.4 lakh, you can even spend Rs 4.5 crore, without being held accountable for it! We and the Supreme Court have been asking for a change in the law. The Supreme Court has said it is a bad and dishonest law, but it still hasn8217;t been changed.

The 1996 election was marked by the record number of 70 orders issued by the Chief Election Commissioner to curb electoral malpractices and extravagance. What should we expect this time?

We shall do more of the same. We are very clear that the election has to be peaceful, inexpensive, without shor-sharaba and violence. Where is the money in Indian business and industry? The industry will not be giving very much to anyone. Thora bahut denge They8217;ll give a little. So, this is going to be a frugal election.