Time to take stock, says EC; seeks to broaden canvas

"After fifty years, it’s time to take stock and make a few corrective changes," said Chief Election Commissioner M S Gill, presenting the agenda for the meeting of major recognised state and national parties scheduled for April 29.

For example, when Delhi-based political luminaries register as candidates to enter the Rajya Sabha from other states, there is an incredulous acceptance of their status.

Under the Representation of the People Act (RPA), 1951, any person registered as a voter anywhere in India can contest elections to the Lok Sabha from anywhere in the country. This, however, is not the case with the Rajya Sabha.

Hoping to give a statutory sanction to the ground reality, the Commission has proposed amending the RPA to allow a voter to contest elections to the Rajya Sabha from anywhere in the country, irrespective of whether he or she is an "ordinary resident" of that constituency or not.

Similarly, with the Women’s Reservation Bill hanging fire in Parliament, the Commission has proposed what it thinks may be a more practical solution to the problem of affording adequate representation to women in Parliament and State Legislatures.

One way out according to the Commission is that political parties put up a minimum agreed percentage of women candidates to enjoy recognition and the perks that go with it.

If parties were to themselves decide on how many seats they would give to women candidates, then there would be no need for a constitutional amendment and the problems of rotation of reserved seats and of further internal reservation for women belonging to scheduled castes, scheduled tribes or backward classes would also not exist.

This proposal can be put into effect by simply including a provision in the RPA that a recognised political party, in order to continue to retain its recognition and privileges, would have to put up the minimum agreed percentage of women candidates. The onus of ensuring that the parties stick to their promised percentages would remain with the EC.

The EC also wants the long-overdue task delimitation of Lok Sabha and Assembly constituencies to be entrusted to them. A 26-year freeze was placed on the periodic delimitation exercise in 1975 when it looked as if states, whose populations had declined due to the success of family planning programmes, were to be "punished" with fewer seats.

But the EC, while conducting Parliamentary elections, finds a number of seats which are incongruous in character due to variations in population, area and geographical location.

Due to the disparity in size, the principle of "one man, one vote" where one vote should have the same value as another get completely distorted. Giving the example of Delhi’s Chandni Chowk with 3.76 lakh voters compared to Outer Delhi with more than 31 lakh voters, the CEC said this meant the value of the vote cast in Outer Delhi is about one-eighth the value of the vote cast in Chandni Chowk constituency.

"Many irrational boundaries (of constituencies) were fixed by gerrymandering. We are saying give us the task of rationalising boundaries and ironing out these imbalances," said Gill.

The Commission is also seeking a clear definition of its disciplinary jurisdiction over officials who are assigned electoral duties. Ensuring "clean and fair" elections is possible only when the EC has the powers to take action against errant officers or police acting in a prejudicial manner. The EC wants the political parties to take an unambiguous stand on the Commission’s powers to discipline officials on poll duty.

While the EC’s agenda of items is long, the CEC is pinning its hopes on the political parties rising above narrow partisan interests. "Common sense dictates that political parties put their heads together and take these decisions on national issues with long-term consequences," said Gill.