{"id":31120,"date":"2018-10-27T12:12:20","date_gmt":"2018-10-27T06:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=31120"},"modified":"2018-10-27T12:12:20","modified_gmt":"2018-10-27T06:42:20","slug":"for-cleaner-fairer-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/for-cleaner-fairer-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"For cleaner, fairer elections"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/opinion\/op-ed\/for-cleaner-fairer-elections\/article22809421.ece\"><b>For cleaner, fairer elections<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Electoral reforms in the hands of politicians is a classic example of a fox guarding the henhouse. While there are many policies that both major parties disagree with each other on, they form a remarkable tag team when it comes to electoral reforms.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Context:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Supreme Court\u2019s recent decision on information disclosure paves a way for future constitutional interventions in India\u2019s party funding regime, including the scheme of electoral bonds.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Disclosure of information:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 2002, the Supreme Court, in a landmark decision in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Association for Democratic Reforms v. Union of India (ADR)<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, mandated the disclosure of information.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The disclosure relates to<\/span><b> criminal antecedents, educational qualification, and personal assets of a candidate contesting elections.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sixteen years later, the court has extended the disclosure obligation to further include information relating to <\/span><b>sources of income of candidates and their \u201cassociates\u201d, and government contracts <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">where candidates or their associates have<\/span><b> direct or indirect interests.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The principled basis of the court\u2019s decision is that voters\u2019 <\/span><b>right to know about their candidate is an extension of their freedom of expression.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Party funding:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If there is one piece of information that a voter is most deprived of in India, it is that about <\/span><b>party funding<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Representation of the People Act, 1951: Section 29C(1)(a) <\/span><b>exempts<\/b> <b>political parties from disclosing the source of any contribution below 20,000.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This gives political parties a <\/span><b>convenient loophole to hide their funding sources<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> by breaking contributions into smaller sums, even 19,999 each.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As a result, a vast majority of donations to political parties come from sources <\/span><b>unknown to voters.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The new scheme of electoral bonds takes away even the <\/span><b>facade of disclosure requirements that used to exist in earlier law.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Party agenda:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Parties occupy a special space in India when it comes to<\/span><b> agenda setting.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By virtue of a strong anti-defection law in India, all elected legislators are <\/span><b>bound by their party agenda.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If an elected legislator refuses to toe the party line,<\/span><b> she can be disqualified.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For cleaner, fairer elections Electoral reforms in the hands of politicians is a classic example of a fox guarding the henhouse. While there are many policies that both major parties disagree with each other on, they form a remarkable tag team when it comes to electoral reforms. Context: The Supreme Court\u2019s recent decision on information&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/for-cleaner-fairer-elections\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">For cleaner, fairer elections<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704909246},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}