Hazare’s suggestion for recall of MP impractical: Quraishi

Terming as “impractical” Anna Hazare’s suggestion for right to recall an elected MP, Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi on Wednesday said such a move will lead to “destabilising” the entire system.

“Right to recall in a big country like ours is impractical. It is not easy in a country where candidates are voted by lakhs of voters,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the IIMC convocation function here.

He feared that if the right to recall is put in place, “elections will go on happening and the entire system will destabilise.”

Mr. Quraishi felt the emphasis should be rather on cleansing the election system, barring criminals from contesting elections and encouraging more and more people to come out and vote for the best candidates.

He also did not favour a suggestion for the right to reject candidates in elections saying it is a “difficult task” to implement.

The CEC had earlier said the right of people to reject candidates required a “bit of debate” because a situation of majority of the people rejecting all candidates also has to be considered.

Asked about EC’s preparation for the forthcoming elections in Gujarat, he said it has not yet come into their “radar” as polls in the western state are due only next year.

With exit polls already banned, the CEC also recommended banning opinion polls as they affected poll prospects of political parties.

Talking about electoral reforms, the Chief Election Commissioner suggested a ban on Government advertisements appearing in dailies six months before election dates.

“We have a suspicion that this also could be a modus operandi of paid news. Few months before elections, full page Government ads comes in paper highlighting achievements. That is the misuse of Government funds. It is a political propaganda in the garb of activities of the department,” he said.

Paid news is something to be very “embarrassed about” and media must be very “honest and truthful” in the context of elections because people trust it, he told the convocation.

“The silver lining, however, is that all political parties are adversely affected (by paid news) and feel something needs to be done about it,” he said.

He said 95 per cent of the media is against this and professional journalists don’t like it but “it is only some owners in some cases who sell their conscience which is playing havoc. We need to do something about it.”

Mr. Quraishi also favoured a ban on door-to-door campaigning as that this is the time when “money and liquor change hands.”

What Team Anna is missing on poll reform

It is safe to say Anna Hazare has never heard of Kuttiamma. The cashew nut factory worker was inconsolable on the day Kerala went to elections in 1991. Her name was missing in the voters list in the Mavelikkara constituency. A vote for the Congress candidate would have been a slap on the wrist of her daughter-in-law, a CPM activist. A show of defiance. But it was not to be.

Kuttiamma died three months after the elections. Her name never made it to the voters list. The debate over electoral reforms has all of a sudden come alive after Anna Hazare and his team announced their plan to pursue the introduction of recall of candidates in the voting system.

Law Minister Salman Khurshid told ET (Saturday, September 3) the government is preparing an ambitious law to bar individuals named in criminal chargesheets from contesting elections. Will it work? Is the right to recall feasible? Truth is agreeing on the infirmities of the election system and remedies have seldom yielded simple answers.

In Bangalore, Janaagraha, a civil society organisation, has been working for years to ensure that people like Kuttiamma exercise their right to vote. The organisation's MoU with the Election Commission last year for a project titled Bangalore Electoral System Transformation, or BEST, looks to increase voter registration and eliminate errors of omission, commission and spelling mistakes in electoral rolls. The pilot project in Shanthi Nagar, a constituency of 2 lakh voters, found that 60,000 names have to be transposed, 45,000 have to be added and another 30,000 have to be deleted.

Vote For Voting

The findings will be officially announced on Monday. Ramesh Ramanathan, co-founder of Janaagraha, says his organisation is looking to change the way voter rolls are generated in India. "We want to extend the MoU with the EC and take it across India."

In Delhi, the Association of Democratic Reforms along with National Election Watch work with at least 1,000 other partners to improve the electoral system. On top of the organisation's to-do list is educating citizens about candidates. "People at the grass roots should be informed about a candidate's background and assets," says ADR director Trilochan Sastry.

Complementing these efforts is the Central Election Commission. Tales of booth capture and bogus votes, once rampant, are seldom told anymore. The focus has shifted to the selection of candidates and campaign finance.

Politicians, too, have been doing their bit. Earlier this year, the government raised the spending limit for candidates in the assembly polls to Rs 16 lakh from Rs 10 lakh and Rs 40 lakh from Rs 25 lakh for the Lok Sabha elections. The Representation of the People (Amendment) Bill, 2010 on August 31, 2010 allows the place of residence as mentioned in a passport to determine which constituency a citizen can get enrolled in. Prior to that, the Representation of the People (Second Amendment) Bill, 2008 that banned exit polls was passed.