India's General Election could be carried out in one day instead of the six weeks that is traditionally allocated for the exercise. The country's Chief Election Commissioner, Dr Shahabuddin Yaqoob Quraishi, tells Shyam Bhatia that the only reason for the phased out process is the lack of security forces needed ensure that voters can exercise their rights in a peaceful way.  

Asian Affairs: How do you stop criminals from getting elected to parliament?
Shahabuddin Yaqoob Quraishi: Well we can't because they are not disqualified from contesting. We have been demanding for almost two decades that they should be debarred from contesting. At least those who have serious cases pending against them — heinous offences like rape, murder, dacoity, kidnapping — which will lead to imprisonment of five years or more. But their standard reply is that in politics false cases are filed against each other, so it would be an unfair way of disqualifying somebody. [The accused] may ultimately be innocent. Eleven years ago the Law Commission had recommended that at least those cases, not every case but serious cases and where the court of law has framed the charges… the court has independent authority and at the time of framing of charges…that is the stage they can throw out the case. A third safeguard  suggested is that any case should have been filed six months before the election, so that the candidate has time — if it is a false political case — to have it sorted out. They have now extended it to one year by way of formulation, but we have no problem. Somewhere it should  begin.

Contrary to public perception that the Election Commission is soft on these people, it is not correct. The fact is that it requires the law and the law is not coming through. But in any case if it can happen, it will probably happen now. At least the previous law minister, Mr Moily, was persuaded by us. He came to the Election Commission, we had long, long meetings and we organized seven regional consultations across the country where we talked to all the stakeholders…politicians, academics, journalists, lawyers, judges, citizens, civil society, everybody, and now, on  the basis of all that, this and many    other reform proposals have been put together in the form of a draft Bill.      The draft Bill is going to the committee. So hopefully it will come up before     the Cabinet and then be put to parliament.

AA: So anyone who has allegations of criminal conduct that are at least one year old before the convening of parliament is likely to be barred?
SYQ: Not just an allegation, but [if] a police case has been filed and a court of law has framed the charges.

AA: The current estimate is that at least 15 per cent of sitting MPs have criminal charges filed against them.
SYQ: The number could be more, it could be twice that. It could be 30 per cent and even more in the state assemblies. That's why passing this Bill will be tough for any government.

AA: What is your estimate of election expenses and how can they be    reduced?
SYQ: Election expenses again have been a matter of debate. Some people think that the ceiling we have at the moment, which is 16 lakhs for the Vidhan Sabha and 40 lakhs for the Lok Sabha, is not adequate and should be rationalized. So what is rational? Five times that, 100 times that? We hear that crores are spent on any election. So we really don't know. But the fact is that the law provides for a ceiling and for a good reason. There has to be a ceiling and a reasonable, rational ceiling can be decided. We on our own initiated six months ago with the Law Ministry a ceiling that was actually 10 lakhs and 25 lakhs, We said that at least, as this was decided in 1995/1996, to compensate for inflation, please bring it on par with that. So that's how 10 lakhs became 16 and 25 lakhs became 40. Although from what I hear in private conversations, the expenditure is 10 times or 100 times more. On the other hand, in the latest general election in five states the average return we received was less than 50 per cent of the permissible limit. So people have reported six lakhs, five lakhs,  seven lakhs. They're cheating for a foolish reason. There is a limit of 16 lakhs and they could have gone up to a limit of 15 lakhs and 99,000. By showing only seven lakhs it is very pointless cheating.

AA: You are the Chief Election Commissioner. Can you enforce a ceiling even though there is cheating?
SYQ: Yes and no. We try our best to make sure that everybody spends according to the law and for which there are election observers in the field. We have created an expenditure monitoring division in the commission, we have a complete department working for us, direct contact with the Central Board for Direct Taxes (CBDT), part of the Income Tax Department, we use the tax investigation division, we have vigil over airports and railway stations, major bus routes, hotels and farm houses where money could be kept. For enforcement we have flying squads wherever vehicles are going. We stop them to see whether they are carrying any money — as a result of which we seized about 75 crores in five states which recently completed the polls.

AA: Are you saying you can enforce the ceiling?
SYQ: We can make life difficult for them. My belief is that for every crore we seized, we must have prevented 50 crores from flowing.

AA: Surely, the higher the ceiling, the easier it would be for you to enforce it?
SYQ: Yes, but at the same time, but I'm not sure because what higher ceiling would that be? If expenditure is five crores and the ceiling is 10 lakhs and you make it 20 or 30 lakhs, that is still not going to take care of the five crores we are talking about.

AA: There is some discussion about reserving seats for women at the national parliament level. What are your thoughts about that?
SYQ: Yes, but I'm surprised by the different levels of reaction. The reservation of women at the Panchayati Raj (village and municipal council level) has been welcomed and enforced in super quick time. There is even talk of raising the level of women at the Panchayati level from 30 per cent to 50 per cent, but the same politicians who are so liberal about reserving seats for women at the Panchayat have grave doubts about reserving women's seats at the Vidhan Sabhas or Lok Sabha. At the Lok Sabha or national parliament level, the number of women MPs is about nine per cent. Interestingly, only about six per cent of the candidates were women and nine per cent of the winners were women.

AA: As a citizen and Chief election Commissioner, do you favour raising the number of women MPs at the national level through the enforcement of a reservation system?
SYQ: This is a very positive way of achieving social justice. The fact is that through reservations we do have scheduled castes and scheduled tribes MLAs and MPs, but with women it seems 50 per cent of the population only has nine per cent of the seats at the national level. At the state level it's even less. Anything to improve that would be a good idea.

AA: What are the election plans for next year?
SYQ: Well, next year we have five states going to the polls, including UP, which is one fifth of India, then we have Punjab, Uttarkhand, Goa and Manipur. All between January and April/May.

AA: Why not have state and central elections together?
SYQ: Actually, initially that was probably the scheme of things. But what happens if a state government falls? What do you do? You cannot have President's rule indefinitely once you have a new elected house. So that is what happened. But now there is increasing demand because fighting an election is very difficult for anybody, including political parties and candidates — the money and time spent. So there is this demand for an amendment to be considered for doing it simultaneously. Not impossible, but very, very difficult. But worth looking at.

AA: How much do you at the Election Commission spend at the central and state levels on elections?
SYQ: Our ball park figure is 1200 crores in a general election.

AA: What about the figures from, say, ten years ago?
SYQ: It wouldn't have been that different. Perhaps 900 crores or 1,000. But by the way this is a very small figure. We calculate that it works out at Rs 16 per head for the entire election expense.

AA: What are your thoughts in general about the Indian polity?  Recent reports suggest that you conducted good elections in the state of West Bengal.
SYQ: Well the fact is that the way the Indian polity is going has raised everybody's concerns, including politicians themselves. The very fact that the credibility of politicians is low, we need to do something about it.     Why after every incident of a terrorist attack or any fiasco anywhere, [do] popular polls tell us that citizens don't like politicians? This is a very  dangerous situation. I remember after the Mumbai terror attack TV channels doing a  survey in which 99 or 100      per cent of people said they hated politicians. After all, without politicians, where is democracy? And all   politicians are not bad.  And the fact that India has become a superpower in   many ways is thanks to political leadership. If you look at our neighbours — same people, same environment — they didn't have the same kind of stability and leadership. So where are they and where are we?

AA: Even though distances in India are so vast, isn't six weeks too long to conduct an election?
SYQ: This is a question that is often raised. We can do it in one day. [The] only thing is conducting a peaceful election and a free and fair election that people expect. That requires phasing it out because of the paucity of security forces. There is increasing demand from every state, every political party, including the ruling party, to bring in central forces. Now central forces or paramilitary forces are limited. So we negotiate with the Home Ministry and they have to pull out forces from this border or that border and then we see what forces are available and what is the law and order situation on the ground. Except for that there is no reason we can't do it in one day. Wherever it's possible we should do it in one day. Tamil Nadu we did in one day, West Bengal we did in six days. Where law and order is an issue, we have to have security forces because we don't want a single loss of life of citizens, voters, polling parties. There were times, Bihar for example recently, where everything was totally peaceful and we had the best ever elections. Extending the polls over six weeks is a very small price to pay. By the way, who suffers from that? You are a voter and there is a phased election, you will vote only once wherever you are. It's only the Election Commission whose job is extended. So we can do it all in one day, but for that you need a peaceful and conducive atmosphere. Where that does not exist we have to do the poll in phases

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