The Hindu : Kerala / Kochi News : An experiment in internal democracy

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Saturday, Oct 10, 2009
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Kerala

Kerala - Kochi

An experiment in internal democracy

K.P.M. Basheer

Youth Congress, NSUI elections are supervised by FAME, an NGO of ex-ECI officials

General secretary of FAME K.J. Rao

KOCHI: When Rahul Gandhi asked the Foundation for Advanced Management of Elections (FAME) to supervise the organisational elections of the Indian Youth Congress and the National Students Union of India (NSUI) recently, he was acknowledging that an idea’s time had come.

“This is the first time a political organisation has asked an outside agency to supervise its internal elections with the authority to scrutinise nomination papers, reject candidates and recommend action against those violating the electoral discipline,” K.J. Rao, general secretary of FAME and former secretary of the Election Commission of India, told The Hindu. “This is our first assignment, but we have written to several political parties that we can conduct and supervise their internal elections.”

The Delhi-based FAME, founded by the former Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) J.M. Lyngdo, is the first of its kind in the whole world, Mr. Rao claimed. “We are an NGO mostly consisting of retired top officials of the Election Commission who are worried about the growing muscle power and money power in Indian politics,” he said. (Former CECs T.S. Krishnamurty and N. Gopalaswamy are the vice-chairmen of FAME, and Major General (retd.) S.P. Jhingon its treasurer). “Our aim is to help facilitate conduct of free and fair elections in all political parties, organisations and even clubs,” Mr. Rao, who is in Kerala as part of the Kerala Students Union (KSU) elections, said. [KSU is the Kerala arm of NSUI.] Incidentally, Mr. Gandhi had visited Kerala on Wednesday in connection with the elections.

When Mr. Gandhi asked FAME to help out with the Youth Congress and NSUI election, it only had two conditions: persons with criminal backgrounds should not be allowed to stand for elections; and, the whole process should be transparent. Mr. Gandhi readily agreed. FAME was also given the authority to take decisions on electoral disputes. When two NSUI activists at Karur in Tamil Nadu were found to have been involved in an attack on an LRO (Lok Sabha returning officer for the party elections) and FAME recommended action against them, Mr. Gandhi had suspended them.

FAME has the mandate to complete the IYC and NSUI elections by the end of next year. As a pilot project, it had run the elections in Punjab and Uttarakhand and these were very successful. Emboldened by this, some 25 ex-officials of the Election Commission, including chief electoral officers, were on the job now.

“We are a non-profit and hence we are not charging a fee as such, though our expenses are being met by these organisations,” he said.

Mr. Rao pointed out that though India was the largest democracy in the world, internal democracy was at a low in most political parties. The top brass of each party decided who would hold what position in the organisation and the people at the grassroots level had not voice at all. Regular, free and fair elections within the political parties would help strengthen the nation’s body politic and stamp out corruption, money power and muscle power in parliamentary elections.

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