{"id":50654,"date":"2019-07-27T19:00:50","date_gmt":"2019-07-27T13:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogadmin.forumias.com\/?p=50654"},"modified":"2019-07-27T16:52:07","modified_gmt":"2019-07-27T11:22:07","slug":"7-pm-private-members-bill-urges-state-poll-funding-27th-july-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/7-pm-private-members-bill-urges-state-poll-funding-27th-july-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"7 PM | Private member\u2019s bill urges state poll funding | 27th July, 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Context:<\/strong> A\nprivate member&#8217;s Bill on amending the Representation of the People&#8217;s Act, 1951,\nand removal of caps on electoral expenditure by candidates contesting\npolls.&nbsp;<br>\n<br>\n<strong>More in news:<\/strong> Equating the\nexpenditure limit on&nbsp;election&nbsp;expenses with prohibition, Congress MP\nRajeev Gowda moved a private member\u2019s bill in the Rajya Sabha that seeks\nremoval of the limit and state funding of elections as part of reforms to the\nway polls are financed in India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Private\nmember\u2019s Bill:<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Any MP who is not a Minister is referred\nto as a private member. Parliament\u2019s key role is to debate and make laws. Both\nMinisters and private members contribute to the lawmaking process. <\/li><li>Bills introduced by Ministers are\nreferred to as government bills. They are backed by the government, and reflect\nits legislative agenda. <\/li><li>Private member\u2019s bills are piloted by\nnon-Minister MPs. Their purpose is to draw the government\u2019s attention to what\nindividual MPs see as issues and gaps in the existing legal framework, which\nrequire legislative intervention.<\/li><li>The admissibility of a private member\u2019s\nBill is decided by the Rajya Sabha Chairman. (In the case of Lok Sabha, it is\nthe Speaker.<\/li><li>The Member must give at least a month\u2019s\nnotice before the Bill can be listed for introduction and then the House\nsecretariat examines it for compliance with constitutional provisions and rules\non legislation before listing.<\/li><li>While government Bills can be introduced\nand discussed on any day, private member\u2019s Bills can be introduced and\ndiscussed only on Fridays.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The\nproposed Bill:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Asserting that the limit was counter productive and only helped those with black money to bribe individual voters and crippled honest candidates, Mr. Gowda mooted The Representation of the People (Amendment) Bill, makes two key proposals:<ul><li>The current per candidate expenditure limit of \u20b970 lakh should be lifted<\/li><li>There should be state funding to ensure a \u201ccleaner polity\u201d, which is a public good.<\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>Asserting that the only way to cleanse the system was to ensure state funding, the bill proposed a National Election Fund, under which each political party could be allotted funds according to their recent electoral performance.\u00a0<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>State funding of&nbsp;election:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It means that government gives funds to political parties or candidates for contesting elections. Its main purpose is to make it unnecessary for contestants to take money\u00a0from powerful moneyed interests so that they can remain clean. For this to happen, state funding needs to be accompanied by\u00a0strict accounting and transparency. In some countries, state funding is extended to meeting some specific forms of spending by political parties, not confined to electioneering alone. Countries keep changing laws relating to state funding depending on experience and financial conditions.<br> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A few government reports\nhave looked at state funding of elections in the past, including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>The&nbsp;<strong>Indrajit Gupta Committee<\/strong>&nbsp;(1998)\nendorsed state funding of elections, seeing \u201cfull justification constitutional,\nlegal as well as on ground of&nbsp;public interest\u201d in order to establish a\nfair playing field for parties with less money. The Committee recommended two\nlimitations to state funding, that the:<\/li><li>State funds should&nbsp;be given only to national\nand state parties allotted a symbol and not to independent candidates.<\/li><li>Short-term state funding should only be given in\nkind, in the form of certain facilities to the recognised political parties and\ntheir candidates.&nbsp;<\/li><li>The&nbsp;<strong>1999 Law Commission of India report<\/strong>&nbsp;concluded\nthat total state funding of elections is \u201cdesirable\u201d so long as political\nparties are prohibited from taking funds from other sources. The Commission\nconcurred with the Indrajit Gupta Committee that only partial state funding was\npossible given the economic conditions of the country at that time.\nAdditionally, it strongly recommended that the appropriate regulatory framework\nbe put in place with regard to political parties (provisions ensuring\ninternal&nbsp; democracy,&nbsp; internal structures and maintenance of\naccounts, their auditing and submission to Election Commission) before state\nfunding of elections is attempted. <\/li><li>The&nbsp;<strong>National Commission to Review the Working of\nthe Constitution, 2001<\/strong>, did not endorse state funding of\nelections but concurred with the 1999 Law Commission report that the\nappropriate framework for regulation of political parties would need to be\nimplemented before state funding is considered.<\/li><li>\u201c<strong>Ethics in Governance<\/strong>\u201d, a report\nof the Second Administrative Reforms Commission (2008) also recommended partial\nstate funding of elections for the purpose of reducing \u201cillegitimate and\nunnecessary funding\u201d of elections expenses. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Way\nForward:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By\nproviding &#8220;floor level fund&#8221; to everyone, state fund scheme can be\nvery helpful for smaller and newer political entrants. For various factors,\nIndia has seen a huge proliferation of political parties formed on ethnic,\nreligious and other parochial grounds. However, due to the growing costs of\nelections, many of them find it difficult to put up a decent campaign. It is\nhere the public funding of elections, especially if that is channelised through\ncandidates, can come very handy to promote competitions between candidatures\nand can help bring internal democracy within these parties. Public funding, if\nimplemented properly, can strengthen lower levels of party units to a situation\nwhere they can demand democratisation. It can therefore solve the problem of\nconcentration of power in the hands of few and creation of dynastic\npolitics.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Source:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/news\/national\/private-members-bill-urges-state-poll-funding\/article28725960.ece\">https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/news\/national\/private-members-bill-urges-state-poll-funding\/article28725960.ece<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Context: A private member&#8217;s Bill on amending the Representation of the People&#8217;s Act, 1951, and removal of caps on electoral expenditure by candidates contesting polls.&nbsp; More in news: Equating the expenditure limit on&nbsp;election&nbsp;expenses with prohibition, Congress MP Rajeev Gowda moved a private member\u2019s bill in the Rajya Sabha that seeks removal of the limit and&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/7-pm-private-members-bill-urges-state-poll-funding-27th-july-2019\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">7 PM | Private member\u2019s bill urges state poll funding | 27th July, 2019<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":49370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[130,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-7-pm","category-public","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/7-PM.png?fit=1000%2C500&ssl=1","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704763775},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50654","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=50654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}