Quraishi gives up the idea of registering separate society to run IIDEM after Centre doubts his intentions.
Following government objections, the Election Commission (EC) has quietly buried the idea of registering a separate society to run the India International Institute of Democracy and Election Management (IIDEM). The project was a brainchild of chief election commissioner (CEC) SY Quraishi.
Instead, it will continue to be a training division of the EC as it was felt in the review that the institute will have more autonomy and independence as part of the EC instead of running it as a society.
Insiders say the idea of the society was shelved to put an end to a lingering suspicion in the government quarters that Quraishi was looking for a post-retirement position for himself after relinquishing the CEC post in July to head the society.
The proposal for creation of a separate society was stalled in the Cabinet late last month, but a letter from the CEC to the prime minister on March 2 that the EC does not want to pursue it, led the government to double its budget to Rs72.17 crores, providing Rs29.19 crores in it for creation of a separate campus for the institute on a five-acre plot recently acquired by the EC in the capital.
Quraishi has stated in the letter that a fresh look was taken not to withdraw the proposal for an autonomous society as a result of “consultations with department of expenditure, feedback from ministry of law and justice and our own experience of running the institute seamlessly for the last eight months.”
He pointed out in the letter that IIDEM, functioning at present as part of the training division of the ECI, has gone from strength-to-strength in a very short time and its activities have taken place smoothly at an optimum pace and the Commission felt that “there is no additional benefit, rather there is a potential for operational constraints for the fledging Institute if it is made into a society.”
The finance ministry had reportedly pointed out that it would be difficult to fund the institute’s budget every year if it is a society and not part of the EC and that it was better to drop the idea of running the institute through a society, sources in the EC said.
The government has already made a provision of Rs29.19 crores in the Union Budget of 2012-13 and also given about Rs50 crores for building the new campus of the institute and for its functioning. An EC press note says it has also received significant support from the external affairs ministry in extending the training facilities available at IIIDEM to developing countries in several ways.
Since its launch in June, the institute has hosted 25 courses for about 500 election officials and other stakeholders in all aspects of election management including security, logistics, legal aspects, Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP), Election Expenditure Monitoring, Voters’ Registration and Model Code of Conduct.
Workshops for national and state political parties on ‘Expenditure Monitoring’ and ‘Paid News’ were also held in the run up to assembly elections in 2012. Another 20 courses are coming up in the next few months in preparation for the forthcoming series of general elections and also summary revision of electoral rolls. These courses are being taken up against the background that 11 million personnel are engaged in the national election with responsibility to deliver a zero error election.
Besides the national training programmes, IIDEM has also conducted three courses for Kenyan and Bhutanese election officials and Nigerian election commissioners.
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