The Hindu : ON TO ELECTIONS

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jan 29, 2004

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

ON TO ELECTIONS

IN A PARLIAMENTARY democracy, a Prime Minister is entitled to seek the dissolution of the popularly elected House as and when it suits his or her political convenience. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has decided to exercise this prerogative by informing the President that he has been authorised by the Union Cabinet to come back to him on February 6 with advice to invoke Article 85 (2), after the Government has secured Parliament's nod for the vote-on-account for the Finance and Railway Ministries. However, the constitutional appropriateness of the Prime Minister's advance notice is questionable. It appears that he wanted to impress upon the President the necessity of dealing expeditiously with the request for dissolution when it comes formally. After all, the ruling National Democratic Alliance perceives for itself a clear political advantage in holding elections swiftly. In terms of convention, as long as there is no doubt about a Prime Minister's parliamentary majority, his request for dissolution ought to be accepted instantly by the Sovereign or the President. Since there is no doubt that Mr. Vajpayee enjoys a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha, it will be entirely in order for the President to grant him his early dissolution.

Once the Lok Sabha is dissolved, the Government technically acquires the `caretaker' tag. And while caretaker status does not imply that the business of governance must come to a halt, it does place on the Government an obligation not to use its vantage ground to advance the ruling party's electoral and political agenda. The President will be very much within his constitutional rights to advise the Prime Minister to this effect. As it is, the Opposition parties have objected to the Government's recent spate of announcements and sops as an unfair attempt to enhance the NDA's poll prospects. The next temptation will be presented by the interregnum between the dissolution of the Lok Sabha and the announcement of the schedule for the general election — when the model code of conduct will be presumed to come into force. It is imperative that the Government desists from exploiting its incumbency for partisan purposes during this interregnum. Fortuitously, a reconstituted Election Commission of India will be in charge when the Lok Sabha is dissolved and a new election exercise gets under way. It will be up to it to give creative and scrupulously even-handed interpretation to its constitutional powers to ensure to the contenders as level a playing field as possible.

It is generally up to a ruling party and the outgoing Prime Minister to set the tone for an election campaign. To the extent the 2004 general election promises to have a new focus on developmental and other larger issues, the increasingly educated and sophisticated electorate expects political parties to keep the debate and argumentation at a dignified and sober level. Unfortunately, the opening salvos between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress, the two principal antagonists, are not very reassuring. Pramod Mahajan, in particular, has struck a stridently chauvinistic note that bodes ill for democracy. These are still early days and hopefully the various political parties and their leaders will be sensitive to the fact that a national election provides them a real opportunity to deepen the democratic system's legitimacy as a reasonable, fair, representational and inclusive arrangement. That means the major political parties have a heavy responsibility to ensure that votes are won by presenting people with a choice of ideas, policies and dreams rather than by confusing and distracting them through competitive campaigns of character assassination and other forms of mud-slinging. To have a free and fair poll is a necessary but insufficient condition for the flourishing of democracy. Democracy cannot prevail unless reason triumphs over emotion, and ideas and ideology over money and criminal power. Will political India rise to the occasion?

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