The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : India’s voting system needs a change: Krishnamurthy

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Wednesday, Feb 27, 2008
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India’s voting system needs a change: Krishnamurthy

Special Correspondent

“It will improve the quality of democracy, protect territorial integrity”

— Photo: R. Ragu

For change: Former CEC T.S. Krishnamurthy greeting Mayor of San Antonio, Texas, Phil Hardberger, at a meeting in Chennai on Tuesday. U.S. Consul-General David T. Hopper and Madras University Vice-Chancellor S. Ramachandran are in the picture.

CHENNAI: India’s voting system must be changed to protect the territorial integrity of the country and improve the quality of democracy in the face of the rising influence of a growing number of small parties based on caste, community and religion, according to T.S. Krishnamurthy, former Chief Election Commissioner of India.

“If first past-the-post system can be changed into something like what they have in Germany, where you have mixed member proportional representation, it is possible to contain the rise of these parties and curtail the practices that ensure that national parties are not in a position to achieve much in the Parliament or in the States,” he said at a discussion on bipartisan politics and policy making here on Tuesday.

“Quality affected”

The multiparty coalition system affected the quality of governance in the country, he said, pointing out that while political parties promised many things, the end product was “unfortunately not in consonance with some of the principles of the Constitution or in the Representation of People’s Act.”

While it was not possible to restrict the number of political parties because of the terms of freedom of association laid down in the Constitution, he suggested that a statute to regulate the formation, conduct and dissolution of parties would go a long way towards improving democracy.

“Except a handful of parties, most of them are run like political fiefdoms, and not democratically” he said, suggesting that mechanisms such as the United States primaries would encourage a selection of better candidates and make political parties more national-minded.

The discussion was organised by the U.S. Consulate General, the Observer Research Foundation and the University of Madras as part of an initiative to twin the city of Chennai with the city of San Antonio, Texas.

Mayor of San Antonio, Phil Hardberger, highlighted that in the U.S. the city council, unlike State and national governing bodies, was one of the few blocks of government that was non-partisan by law because so many civic issues such as clean water and effective police services were better served without being divided on party lines.

Such is the strength of his views that he has, unusually, decided not to endorse any candidate in the upcoming election in order to get as much done in the city as possible.

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