chief election commissioner Quraishi said that they were fraught with dangerous consequences for the country, leading to frequent elections and instability.
Rejecting team Anna’s two main demands of incorporating ‘right to recall’ and ‘right to reject’ in the proposed electoral reform process, chief election commissioner SY Quraishi here on Saturday said they were fraught with dangerous consequences for the country, leading to frequent elections and instability.
He, however, castigated the government for not bringing out other set of reforms, as suggested by the Election Commission.
“Government should take action and bring out a reform bill. We were promised by law minister Salman Khursheed that a bill will be tabled in the parliament. But that has not happened,” he said.
Participating in a debate on ‘challenges of govenance’, Quraishi said to avoid anarchy and Egypt’s Tahrir Tehreer Square like incidents, democracy needs to be strengthened. Pointing out that government may not have been able to table a bill on electoral reforms in the current session, due to its pre-occupations on other issues, he expected the law ministry to keep its promise in the next session.
Demanding inclusion of election commissioners also in the list of immunities, as enjoyed by the chief election commission against removal from offices, Quraishi also asked for financial autonomy for the Commission for its independent working.
Quoting a study undertaken on the issue of ‘right to recall’ in Punjab and Jharkhand, where it has been introduced at panchayat levels, he said it was found that some upper caste elements were using, it as a weapon to harass lower caste sarpanchs.
Further, he said an election requires manpower of 11 million people drawn from education, revenue and other departments. Therefore, frequent elections would affect official machinery delivering their normal functioning.
Team Anna wanted these two proposals to make public representatives permanently accountable to their voters. They also believed that right to reject would help to curb muscle and money power and also prevent political parties in fielding criminals. He said commission had already proposed to debar candidates charged under heinous crimes from contesting polls. The government had been sitting on this proposal since 1998, when it was drafted by the EC.
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