Sweetest time for democracy !

With the announcement of the Assembly elections for five states, I feel the citizens are having the sweetest time for democracy at the moment. Firstly for the reason that this time we won’t see convicted politician’s being in the list of candidates and secondly, because of the fact that the NOTA option would be appearing in the list for the first time in history. The election commission has also proposed to deploy ‘awareness observers’ who would enable more people to come out to vote.

The ordinance that was passed in the parliament, which doesn’t allow convicted politician’s to compete in the elections is undoubtedly a good step towards having a cleaner and healthier competition among the candidates, eventually benefitting the public who experienced the irony of  tainted politicians coming into power again and again. The Aam Aadmi chief and Anna Hazare can be regarded as the mentor for such a change in the political system, although all the other parties were enthusiastic in taking credits on the ordinance. 

Awareness observers wil be deployed to oversee measures for voter awareness and facilitation with the aim of increasing electorate turnout. The election commission is also taking measures to educate candidates about filling up all columns in their affidavits at the time of filing their nominations. The Supreme court had recently ruled that in cases where columns are left blank, the nominations are liable for rejection.

The NOTA option is a first step towards the establishment of an electorate’s “right to reject.” , a step that could put pressure on parties to field better-qualified politicians. It is not only an option to reject the candidate but can be a sign of rejecting the policies that a party proposed and their previous performance. At present voting ‘None of the above’ is just informational, but in the future it might have the capability to signal a new election. This is considered as a most welcome move in a country where nearly a third of the members of the lower house of Parliament are facing criminal charges, according to the Association for Democratic Reforms, a New Delhi-based advocacy group for transparency in governance. NOTA is considered to be  public-friendly version of the Section 49 -0 , which was earlier discussed about in this blog.

Many people go to vote but are they all satisfied with their votes? The new measures will be a better way for the dissatisfied to show up their presence. Although we would still have to wait and see the benefits of the EC measures, the change is positive and I do not have even a faint feeling of doubt that it would encourage more and better candidates in future elections.

PJay