Election Commission Must Have Well-Defined And Punitive Powers
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2020-11-06 16:03:35
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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack
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The two major problems with regulatory bodies in India is that most of them either do not have any punitive powers or these powers are not clearly defined and they do not act impartially, more often than not favouring the ruling party. Hence, when the Supreme Court (SC) stayed the Election Commission's (EC) order removing Kamal Nath from the list of "star campaigners" in Madhya Pradesh while observing that the EC did not have the powers to dictate who could be a star campaigner, it was in essence putting in focus the fact that despite being tasked with ensuring that political parties ran a clean campaign that followed the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) in letter and spirit, the EC could not punish a person in whatever way it thought fit. The SC said that it was the prerogative of the political party to nominate leaders who could be star campaigners and the EC could not remove them from the list.
But the EC has always relied on past SC judgments which gave it a wide rope in taking a decision in a situation which was not clearly defined. Obviously, if the EC is to control and supervise the elections, it needs to have punitive powers. A star campaigner has no limits on poll expenditure as his expenses are not added to the poll expenditure account of any candidate. Hence, if a star campaigner abuses the MCC, as Kamal Nath did by making obnoxious personal remarks against BJP candidate Imarti Devi, the best way to punish him or her is to remove him from the list of such campaigners. But as the SC thinks otherwise, it is now upon the government to suitably amend the law to first clearly define the powers of the Commission and then give it punitive powers. That would take care of one problem. The other problem of bias is not easy to eliminate. It requires men of stature who can withstand pressure from the ruling party to make a regulator truly unbiased. But where do you find such men in India now? Crawling when asked to bend is the norm now and the backbone has all but disappeared in the bureaucracy.
