Andhra Pradesh - Visakhapatnam   

Meet calls for electoral reforms

By Our Special Correspondent

VISAKHAPATNAM, JUNE 6. Speakers at a meeting felt the need for electoral reforms to correct the disparity between votes polled and seats obtained by different political parties to further strengthen democracy.

Addressing a meet on `The 2004 verdict', organised by the Centre for policy studies here on Saturday, the former Mayor, D.V. Subba Rao, said that the disparity was glaring in the Assembly elections in which the Congress got 185 seats with 38 per cent votes while the TDP polled 37 per cent votes but got only 40 seats.

Mr. Subba Rao felt that the 2004 election was dominated more by local issues than national issues in many States resulting in the defeat of the NDA.

He admitted that the India shining campaign did not click because the benefits did not percolate to the poor people in rural and urban areas.

Politicians, who could not feel the pulse of the people, advanced the polls acting on their impulse and paid a dear price. He said that the media had failed to play its watchdog role.

Another speaker, K.C. Reddy, did not agree that local issues had dominated the election. He felt that the elections had clearly revealed that people had discarded the Hindutva and globalisation policies.

The fact that the Left parties got 64 seats highlighted the need to make the reforms pro-agriculture, pro-investment and pro-employment.

While welcoming the proposal to increase budget for education from three to six per cent, he cautioned that the delivery system should be toned up to ensure that the benefit would reach the common people. R. Venkata Rao hailed the people for delivering a clear verdict against wthe NDA Government which wanted to reap benefits from media hype and the advanced polls which smacked of political arrogance.

It was a case of offline people throwing away online people, he said.Director of Centre for policy studies, A. Prasanna Kumar, who welcomed the gathering, said that the media hype, road-shows, campaign by film stars have trivialized the election campaign.

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