'Elections in India have become a business'

NEW DELHI: Some trivia is anything but trivial. Especially when it is to do with prospective policy makers of the country. Like that the number of political parties registered in India at the moment is 810 and growing.

The number has gone up from a little over 500 in the last 18 to 20 months following the extension of tax benefits to both the donor and the recipient in the case of funds to political parties, notes the Chief Election Commissioner of India, N Gopalaswami, with a wry smile.

At an exclusive interaction with the web editions of The Times of India Group on Tuesday, the CEC shared his hopes for an electoral process that would not need security and a civil society that would share in the process rather than shun it.

Expressing his “anguish” at the growing desire of “community service”, the CEC likened the modern-day electoral process to running a business.

“Everybody is just dying to serve the community, and is willing to take any step possible under the sun. Elections in India have assumed the role of a business, and everyone wants to win it at any cost,” he said, elaborating that candidates routinely tried anything from bogus voting to intimidation.

However, he clarified that even this spirit for community service was missing in urban India. Harping on the divorced relationship that the urban electorate shares with the franchise process in the country, the CEC, who has been the talk of the town recently, said that urban apathy towards the electoral process is bad.

“Urban India doesn’t expect anything. It knows there is no advantage from the process, and therefore chooses to remain aloof from it,” Goplaswami reiterated.

Drawing the parallel of Lucknow which witnessed 27-30% voting turnout in the recently-concluded Assembly polls with that of suburban Mohanlal Ganj that saw 43% turnout, the CEC emphasised that there does exist general apathy in the urban areas. When asked, if compulsory voting could be the answer to do away with such apathy, he replied in the negative.

There seems to be no reform that one can suggest which the CEC has not considered. Many of them are encapsulated in the suggestions made by the Election Commission, which are yet to find a political nod. Among these, the division of votes through manipulation of caste calculations, needs immediate addressing, the CEC said.

In order to make the electoral process more credible and sound, and increase voter confidence in their elected representatives, he suggested that a 50 plus one per cent win margin must be made mandatory for all those testing their luck at the booths.

“A 50 plus one per cent win will check dummy candidates from splitting the vote and skewing the overall balance,” Gopalaswami said.

Citing the instance of Jharkhand, where around 94.83% of the winners had scored less than 50% margin in the previous elections, the CEC went on to say that this will also stem the entry of non-serious entrants from getting into the political fray and fragmenting the votes.

For the man who played a pivotal role in delivering “free and fair” polls in Uttar Pradesh, implementing an electoral process with minimum glitches wasn’t easy in democratic India’s largest state.

From deleting 56 lakh names from the voters list to tracking down interlopers and absconders (including deleting 180 unconnected names from a village close to the then CM’s constituency) to doing an analysis of the male-female ratio in order to understand the voters gender bend, the CEC left no stone unturned.

When asked to comment on the two-party system mooted by President Kalam, Gopalaswami ruled out anything of this sort in the near future. Elaborating that such a method doesn’t hold good in the Indian scheme of things, the CEC said that India still has a long way to go.