Skip to main content

CEC says electoral reforms will strengthen democracy

EC for legislative framework to deal with the issues such as paid news

Chief Election Commissioner V. S. Sampath delivering the Jhabarmal Sharma memorial lecture, in Jaipur on Saturday.— Photo: Rohit Jain Paras
Chief Election Commissioner V. S. Sampath delivering the Jhabarmal Sharma memorial lecture, in Jaipur on Saturday.— Photo: Rohit Jain Paras
Chief Election Commissioner V. S. Sampath on Saturday said the electoral reforms recommended by the Election Commission would strengthen democracy and bring about radical changes by ensuring transparency in the functioning of political parties, keeping a check on expenditures and setting in motion decriminalisation of politics.

Delivering the 23rd Jhabarmal Sharma memorial lecture here, Mr. Sampath said he was in favour of a well-defined legislative framework to deal with the issues such as paid news and candidates filing false affidavits with their nomination papers. In this context, he called upon the media to mobilise public opinion for cleansing the political system.
Jaipur-based Hindi daily, Rajasthan Patrika organised the lecture to commemorate noted journalist and historian Jhabarmal Sharma. State Lokayukta Sajjan Singh Kothari presided. Mr. Sampath said he had written to the Union Law Ministry for introducing new provisions for disqualification of candidates and two years’ imprisonment for those furnishing incorrect details in their affidavits. Similarly, the menace of paid news could be addressed through strict monitoring.
The CEC praised the Supreme Court for introducing several new provisions, including the “none of the above” option in the electronic voting machines, through its proactive judgments and said these initiatives required urgent attention of law makers. The apex court also protected the Election Commission’s autonomy, he noted.
Mr. Sampath said while there was scope for more electoral reforms, the view taken by a section of political parties that the EC should only be concerned about free and fair polls was debatable. “It is within our mandate to increase people’s participation [in democracy] by trying to enhance the voting percentage.”
“The higher the participation, the better is the quality of elected representatives,” he said, while pointing out that the recent Assembly elections in five States had witnessed a phenomenal increase in voting percentage. He said the EC would make greater efforts to deal with “urban apathy” and increase the voter turnout in the coming Lok Sabha elections. Mr. Sampath said vesting the Election Commission with more powers would help it carry out proper monitoring of political parties and look into the methods of collection and expenditure of funds by them. “As of now, the Commission does not enjoy powers to derecognise even those parties which do not contest elections.”
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SC asks Centre to strike a balance on Rohingya issue (.hindu)

Supreme Court orally indicates that the government should not deport Rohingya “now” as the Centre prevails over it to not record any such views in its formal order, citing “international ramifications”. The Supreme Court on Friday came close to ordering the government not to deport the Rohingya. It finally settled on merely observing that a balance should be struck between humanitarian concern for the community and the country's national security and economic interests. The court was hearing a bunch of petitions, one filed by persons within the Rohingya community, against a proposed move to deport over 40,000 Rohingya refugees. A three-judge Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, began by orally indicating that the government should not deport Rohingya “now”, but the government prevailed on the court to not pass any formal order, citing “international ramifications”. With this, the status quo continues even though the court gave the community liberty to approach i...
3 comments
Click Here To Read more »

What's ailing Namami Gange programme?(DTE)

Winters are extremely hectic for Sushma Patel, a vegetable grower in Uttar Pradesh’s Chunar town. Her farm is in the fertile plains of Ganga where people grow three crops a year. But this is the only season when she can grow vegetables. And before that, she needs to manually dig out shreds of plastic and wrappers from her one-hectare (ha) farm. “This is all because of the nullah,” she says, pointing at an open drain that runs through her field, carrying sewage from the neighbourhood to the Ganga. “Every monsoon, the drain overflows and inundates the field with a thick, black sludge and plastic debris. We cannot even go near the field as the stench of sewage fills the air,” she says. But Patel has no one to complain to as this is the way of life for most people in this ancient town. About 70 per cent of the people in Chunar depend on toilets that have on-site sanitation, such as septic tanks and pits. In the absence of a proper disposal or management system, people simply dump the faec...
3 comments
Click Here To Read more »

"ISRO has capabilities to build geostationary satellites for air quality monitoring” (downtoearth)

Pawan Gupta's findings on trans-boundary movement of pollution (Punjab to Delhi) from biomass burning in 2015 spurred debates. He participated in discussions with Indian regulators early September at the Better Air Quality Conference in Busan on the advantages of using satellite data for air quality monitoring. He explains to Down to Earth how air quality monitoring is done using satellite data. How is satellite data used to measure air pollution? Satellites that provide information on atmospheric pollutants are normally (not always) in the low earth orbits (400-1000 km above the Earth’s surface). A single satellite can carry one or more remote sensing instruments onboard that look down to earth and obtain information about the object in the field of view of satellite sensor. The Earth receives electromagnetic radiation from the sun, which travels through space and reaches the earth-atmosphere system. The radiation then interacts with the Earth’s atmosphere and the surface...
1 comment
Click Here To Read more »