The Hindu : All-party consensus on transparent voting

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Oct 30, 2003

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National

All-party consensus on transparent voting

By Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI OCT. 29. Voting in elections for the Rajya Sabha will no longer be through secret ballot. At an all-party meeting here today, the consensus was to allow open voting, with a provision for checking of the ballots by agents of political parties before the vote is cast.

The Law Minister, Arun Jaitley, had convened the meeting to consult political parties on rules and guidelines for voting in Rajya Sabha elections under the new law. He had given this assurance to MPs when the Bill to enable open voting was passed in the monsoon session of Parliament.

The CPI and the CPI(M) which had opposed the Bill in Parliament and continued to express fears about "anomalies'' in the model being adopted today, apparently went along with the consensus view as the Bill had now become law and it must be made "practical," Mr. Jaitley told reporters later.

The voting for Rajya Sabha approved by parties today, and which will now be adopted through an executive order, will have a two-tier system to allow political parties to "check'' whether all their MLAs have indeed voted according to party directions. Before the vote is cast, a nominated "agent'' of the party will examine the marked ballot of MLAs belonging to the party he represents, and after voting is completed political parties will be able to request the returning officer to show them the ballots for "inspection."

Each ballot would be numbered and signed by the voter, Mr. Jaitley said. Thus there would be no room whatsoever for anybody to vote secretly for any candidate. However, they would still be able to vote in defiance of their party wishes without attracting the anti-defection law or losing their membership of the House. Of course, political parties would be able to take disciplinary action against them.

The BJP was keen on open voting to "curb money power'' in Rajya Sabha elections. However, the CPI leader, D. Raja, said the larger parties had pushed this through as they had been unable to keep their flock together and were uncertain of the loyalty of their MLAs. It was also an admission on their part that their MLAs were "purchasable commodities.''

Mr. Jaitley said the AIADMK and the Nationalist Congress Party had favoured voting in the Assembly itself, but that suggestion was rejected as unpractical for the prevalent preferential system of voting through a single transferable vote.

On other issues on the agenda there was no immediate consensus. It was decided that parties would give their views in writing to the Government before any final view is taken.

Should all Election Commissioners be given the protection now available to only the Chief Election Commissioner who can only be removed through impeachment? Most parties favoured this but wanted more time to react formally. The EC had also suggested that money spent by it should not be voted upon by Parliament but charged to the Consolidated Fund of India to make the EC truly autonomous. However, on this some parties felt it would dilute the right of Parliament to examine all expenses incurred by the Government, but a formal view will be taken later.

A contentious issue was the proposal that security deposits for candidates contesting elections be doubled and the money that can be legally spent by candidates is also virtually doubled. This was opposed by some of the smaller parties who said it would legitimise "money power'' and would not weed out the non-serious candidates, if that was the intention.

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