Why in News?
The Election Commission of India (ECI) has plans to strengthen the electoral process, but some require scrutiny.
What is an unhealthy pattern?
- Even as electoral democracy has taken strong root in India, some unhealthy patterns have emerged.
- The voter electoral participation has remained robust with the poor voting in large numbers.
- But, the candidates and winners in Assembly and Lok Sabha polls have largely been from affluent sections.
- With elections becoming expensive, most parties have sought to field richer candidates irrespective of their merit to represent public interest.
What are the current regulations?
- Current campaign finance regulations by the ECI seek transparency on expenses by party and candidate.
- The ECI prescribes limits on a candidate’s expenditure have not been sufficient deterrents.
- Poll results have tended to be a function of either party or leader preference by the voter rather than a statement on the capability of the candidate.
- In many cases, capable candidates stand no chance against the money power of more affluent candidates.
What does the ECI seek to do now?
- The ECI is considering tightening ways to cap the expenditure of parties.
- It is welcomed as it should provide a more level playing field.
- But even this can be meaningful only if there is more transparency in campaign finance.
- The ECI has also suggested bringing social media and print media under the silent period ambit after campaigning ends.
- Regulating social media will be difficult and it remains to be seen how the ECI will implement this.
What does the ECI’s plan need?
- The ECI’s plans to introduce new safe and secure voting methods, however, this needs a thorough scrutiny.
- The EVM used now as a standalone, one-time programmable chip-based system, along with administrative safeguards is a safe mechanism.
- But any other online form of voting that is based on networked systems should be avoided.
- The idea of an Aadhaar-linked remote voting system that is sought to be built as a prototype could be problematic.
- This may be problematic because the unique identity card has excluded genuine beneficiaries when used in welfare schemes.
In what areas do the ECI needs concentration?
- The measures missing from the recommendations are the need for more teeth for the ECI in its fight against vote buying and hate speech.
- Vote buying - Increasingly, parties have resorted to bribing voters in the form of money and other commodities in return for votes.
- While the ECI has tried to warn outfits or in some cases postponed polls, these have not deterred them.
- Hate speech - In times when hate speech is used during elections, the ECI has only managed to rap the offending candidates or party spokespersons on the knuckles.
- But stricter norms including disqualification of the candidate would be needed for true deterrence.
Source: The Hindu
