Crime mustn8217;t pay

In shifting the responsibility for ensuring a clean poll process to the political parties, the Election Commission is not trying to abdicat...

In shifting the responsibility for ensuring a clean poll process to the political parties, the Election Commission is not trying to abdicate responsibility. Rather, it is fixing blame where it actually lies. In fact, no electoral reform, whether to ensure a lower representation of the criminal class in the House or better representation of women, can be enforced by law. These are ethical issues and cannot be resolved by legalistic impositions. The Commission8217;s initiative to disbar candidates with a conviction record is obviously not foolproof. It cannot be used against the 1,500-odd criminals who were fielded by various parties in the last election, because most of them are bound to be on appeal. And what of the hundreds of local dadas 8212; the foot-soldiers of any poll-rigging campaign 8212; who have never been charged, let alone prosecuted? A top-down initiative can never be watertight without infringing on democratic rights and generating controversy. Enforcement would also be a serious strain on the State machinery. The alternative chosen by the Commission is far more viable. The political class ought to welcome it anyway because it gives them a solid issue in a depressingly issue-free election: Our candidate washes whiter than their candidate. Competitive public hygiene ought to do the polity a lot of good.

When the Representation of the People Act was enacted in 1951, its architects were only concerned about the use of corrupt practices during elections. Sections 8 and 99 only discuss how to deal with delightfully bland events like booth-capturing and small-time rigging. It was not foreseen that in the late nineties, corruption would be a systemic problem, the prime mover of the whole electoral process. Candidates regularly get money by questionable means, disburse it to questionable workers, and thereby make it to the legislatures. After that, it is payback time, and a grubstake for the next election also has to be built up. The whole machine runs on dirty money and it is no longer sufficient to curb cases of booth-capturing or false voting to keep the polls clean.

Now, Section 8 needs to be reinterpreted in a far wider manner in order to retain its original spirit. Everyone likely to use questionable means in public life before, during and after the polls needs to be kept out of the game. The Election Commission is in no position to vet all the candidates in the fray, who are likely to number over 10,000. Only the party leaders handing out tickets can serve as adequate filters and the Election Commission is perfectly right in calling for accountability there. Equally commendable is its commitment to increasing the ceiling on election expenses. It is futile to ask candidates to file expenses when the ceilings are so unrealistically low. There is no way the polls are going to be cleaned up without making every part of the process transparent. Let parties use as much money as they want, and show the electorate where it all comes from and where it goes to. And let them field criminal candidates as well 8212; in the knowledge that the electorate is going to make them pay for it.