Manthan topic:Fairness at play

Team member details:

R.Manichandra(Team co-ordinator), K.Abhilash, N.Abhinay, B.Vivek, K.Aditya

A look on the Loksabha elections in 2009(in fig.):

8070 candidates have contested for 543 loksabha constituencies. Out of the 8070 candidates 7810 candidates have produced their affidavits. There were some terrible facts that were exposed to the country after the affidavits were analysed. A total no. of 1158 candidates or 15% declared pending criminal cases which included candidates from all major parties including INC,BJP,SP,BSP….etc.., Out of the 1158 candidates 608 had serious criminal cases over them. Out of the 7810 candidates 1249 were crorepathis or millionaires according to their respective affidavits. 242 People produced zero assets in their affidavits. Among the 438 candidates of INC and 428 candidates of BJP,63% and 42% of the total candidates were millionaires respectively. Out of the 543 candidates who have won the elections,315 are crorepathis which raised from 156/543 in 2004 general elections. Among the 543 candidates who have won the elections,274 candidates have involved in serious crimes.

Did u notice anything from the above information?

It was evident that only the candidates who had money power and muscle power under their belt had won in the majority of the constituencies. Those candidates forcefully won in the elections by using either their money or muscle power and in some places both. Do we really need those persons who illegally won the elections and representing us in the Loksabha? Why do we need such kind of persons who spend 1 crore of their money in the elections and corrupt our hundreds and hundreds of crores? Yes,we don’t want the persons who use their money and muscle power in elections to win them.

What are the steps needed to stop this current situation? What do we really need to do?

Steps needed to reduce the influence of money power in the elections:

1. Keeping the surveillance on the bank transactions: From 6 months before the beginning of the elections,there should be a watch on the irregular transactions that take place in some accounts.For example,some accounts will be stable with only inflow of money and no outflow.Suddenly at the election time,the outflow will be huge.This type of accounts should be monitored perfectly.

2. Linking the aadhar card with the bank accounts: All the present bank account holders should link their aadhar cards to the bank accounts.This reduces the no.of binami accounts that are created for the transactions during the election time.

3. Biometric linking of the bank accounts: All the bank account holders must link their fingerprints and their eyes.This can help us in easily identifying the no.of accounts a single person possesses and can easily trackout all the transactions of the candidate.

4. Deletion of an explanation:The explanation 1 of section 77(1) of the representation of peoples act 1951 should be deleted or modified and all the bank accounts of his blood relatives should also be taken into consideration while counting his election funds.

5. Surveillance on the sales and purchases of gold and vehicles:All the sales and purchases of gold and vehicles should be clearly monitored.Bulk purchasing of gold and vehicles from before 6 months of elections should be brought to the collector and he should take the explanation of those persons who purchase them.

6. Limited production of liquor: At the time of elections limited liquor is to be produced by the liquor companies and this should be the strict policy to be followed by the excise department.The average consumption should be analysed and only that amount of liquor should be produced at the election time and no more liquor shall be produced.

7. Proper audit for the accounts: The accounts should be properly audited by an auditor appointed by the government.

8. Immediate cancellation of nomination when found with excess of money: When a candidate is caught with an excess of money than the normal

amount then immediately his nomination is to be cancelled.

Challenges and mitigation factors that occur during the implementation: All the bank officials will not be supportive to the above procedure,some of the bank officials are also involved in the illegal transactions.so they may not be providing the proper information to us. Sudden linking of the biometric way cannot be implemented in a short time.It takes a huge time and also huge money is needed to be invested to complete the process.The banks may not be co-operative in implementing this system. All the government officials are also included in the corruption process.Hence the correct auditing of their expenses may not come in a positive manner. The politicians will oppose linking their blood relatives and other accounts with their own election amount.

Steps needed to reduce the influence of muscle power in the elections:

1. Bind overing of rowdy sheeters:All those criminals who have pending rowdy sheets upon them should be bindovered before 3 days of the election.Those rowdy sheeters who don’t get surrendered should be arrested as soon as they are seen during the election code.

2. Monitoring of the elections : This process is needed to be done in 2 stages. i) In the non-case sensitive areas.

ii)In the case-sensitive areas. i)In the non-case sensitive areas: In the areas where there are no

disturbance or violence that take place surveillance cameras are to be placed in every polling booth.All the polling process must be recorded in a cc camera of 15 frames per second or 250 Kbits/sec.The whole polling process is to be monitored from the district collectorate.The whole election process of 8 hours is to be recorded and sent directly to the collectorate without any mediator.The camera consumes only 0.9gb of memory.And the camera must be connected to a battery so that it performs with out any interruption of the power.

A person should be appointed for seeing the surveillance procedure of every 10 polling booths and he should see that there are no interruptions in the polling procedure and checks whether the information is being properly to the collectorate or not. Similarly every 10 polling booths are linked and those persons should send the information from time to time to the collectorate. All these data should be stored in the hard drives and can be provided as the witness when asked upon. All the security cameras have to removed properly and they can be used in the security purpose all over the constituency. This process helps not only in the surveillance of the election but also improving the security of the country.

ii) In the case-sensitive areas: In the case sensitive areas of constituencies where frequent violence and disturbance takes place the following method should be implemented. There should be a finger print scanner at the entrance of the polling booth and every voter who comes to vote should compulsorily scan their 10 fingers inorder to vote.

The electronic voting machines should be modified in such a way that it scans the finger prints of the voter properly inorder to record a vote. So when the voter gets his fingers scanned at the entrance and goes into the polling booth for voting one of his finger gets noted and his vote is recorded and further no votes can be voted by the same person again and again. When the same person tries to vote again as he had voted earlier and his finger prints are scanned,the evm should reject his vote and he cannot vote for the second time. The memory taken for 10 finger prints scanned is around 10 MB.This is a very small amount of data and this fingerprints can be used further for crime detection and identifying the persons during the bomb blasts and any such incidents. This method is very much efficient in working and can be used succesfully in the case-sensitive areas and all the mal practices that are followed during the election like rigging and false votes. All those fingerprints can be utilised for next time elections and can be used for several other purposes. This type of voting process can be very effective in the case sensitive areas like bihar,jharkhand and uttarpradesh where muscle power is highly used.

Challenges and mitigation factors that occur during the implementation:

The system cannot be easily understood by the rural people and if goes on a negative role,then the percentage of voting may be recorded less and sometimes even the rural people can boycott the elections. As the above 2 systems are highly dependant on power,the areas which are affected by power cuts cannot use this systems. Another major problem with the above issues is the memory that they consume.Even if we consider 1GB data for recording video of a polling booth and 10GB of data for storing the fingerprints the amount of memory for the country is huge and we cannot store it easily The cost required for the implementation of both systems will be an additional burden to the government to buy all the required equipments in additional with the regular election budget.

References: i Association for Democratic Reforms. (2009). Lok Sabha Election Watch 2009. Retrieved from http://adrindia.org/sites/default/files/0.10%20full%20report%2020-05-2010.pdf Press Trust of India. (2009, March 1). Lok Sabha polls to cost more than US presidential election. Live Mint. Retrieved from http://www.livemint.com/Politics/sFrNtS4yTgirv7rY0y8CHO/Lok-Sabha-polls-to-cost-more-thanUS-presidential-election.html Election Commission of India. (n.d.). Lok Sabha Election Expenditure. Retrieved from http://eci.gov.in/eci_main1/expenditurel_loksabha.aspx iVenkatesan, J. (2013, July 10). MPs, MLAs to be disqualified on date of criminal conviction. The Hindu. Retrieved from http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/mps-mlas-to-be-disqualified-on-date-of-criminalconviction/article4901596.ece Election Commission of India. (n.d.). FAQ’s Contesting for Elections. Retrieved from http://eci.nic.in/eci_main1/Contesting.aspx Singh, G. (2011, February 28). Poll expense hiked by 60 per cent but MPs want more. India Today. Retrieved from http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/poll-expense-hiked-but-mps-want-more/1/131094.html