Introduction

A free, fair and unbiased electoral process along with greater citizen participation is fundamental to safeguarding the values of a democracy. Unfortunately, Indian electoral system is grappling with certain issues which have eroded the trust of many people in the country such as role of black money, issues related to power of Election commission of India (ECI), criminality in politics etc.

Body

Problems of Electoral Politics

• Voter Bribing

Increasingly, parties have resorted to bribing voters in the form of money and other commodities in return for votes, and while the ECI has tried to warn outfits or in some cases postponed polls, these have not deterred them.

• No Financial accountability
  • Opacity in donations: Political parties receive majority of their funds through anonymous donations (approximately 70%) through unknown sources as per ADR.
  • Without proper financial accountability, there will be large scale voter bribing that will go unnoticed in most cases. For instance, Vellore General Elections were postponed after a large amount of unaccounted money was unearthed by officials in 2019.
• Increasing trend: According to Election Commission (EC) data compiled over the span of 2019 election season, seizures of illicit intoxicants, cash and gold have been vastly higher than before.
  • Cash seizures were up 181.3 %, while alcohol volumes have risen 9% and narcotic quantities have shot up 355.6% in five years.
  • The value of all the bottles of liquor, packets of narcotics, wads of currency and biscuits of shiny metal in electoral service recovered by the authorities is estimated at ?3,458.7 crore, several times what was seized during the general elections of 2014.
• Lack of transparency: Despite provisions under section 29 of RPA, 1951, parties do not submit their annual audit reports to the Election Commission. Parties have also defied that they come under the ambit of RTI act. EC does not have the power to deregister a party for financial misgivings.
• Culture of Freebies: Political parties promise many freebies in their manifesto to woe the voters. However, it is unclear how this will be financed and accounted for. This is also a sort of passive voter bribing that must be discouraged.
• Lack of action against bribes: The EC sought insertion of a new section, 58B, to RPA, 1951 to enable it to take action if parties bribe voters of a constituency, which has not come to light.

• Hate Speech
  • Ineffective Model Code of Conduct: MCC says, “no party or candidate shall include in any activity which may aggravate existing differences or create mutual hatred or cause tension between different castes and communities, religious or linguistic”.
    • However, this widely remains ineffective, as MCC is not justiciable.
  • Communal Politics: Communal rhetoric during elections revives the centuries-old schisms that democracy has been unable to heal.
    • Thus, election campaigns in India often focus on protecting or re-establishing community identity or on fomenting fear of its loss.
  • Targeted propaganda: Democracy has been reduced to an advertisement campaign. The business conglomerates owned or tied up with political parties influence the views of the people by targeting their audience. Algorithmic filtering have created the cycle of enforcing and reinforcing belief systems and ensuring that we don’t open our minds to diverse opinions.
  • Election Manipulation: The issue of fake news has turned out to be a global menace. It has its role in deciding result of elections (Example: USA) to polarization of societies to communal riots to even crumbling the economies. Tolerance and harmony are victims of the new social media age.

In times when hate speech is used during elections, the ECI has only managed to rap the offending candidates or party spokespersons on the knuckles but stricter norms including disqualification of the candidate would be needed for true deterrence.

Reforms Needed

• A better and more effective approach to limit the influence of hoaxes on WhatsApp and other platforms is to increase media literacy. Observing the silent period of 48 hours before the election day.
• Model Code of Conduct : In 2019 central elections, Supreme court rebuked ECI for not taking action against violations of MCC. Post his ECI banned political actors from campaigning for a given duration under its powers given by Article 324. ECI also postponed the elections in Vellore constituency to curb electoral corruption under.
• The government should bring out a policy framework on the possible harm due to the internet messaging platforms to engage at a deeper level.
• Government of India could partner with local news groups to further educate citizens on how to identify real news from fake news.
• Press Council of India, a regulatory body, can warn, admonish or censure the newspaper, the news agency, the editor or the journalist or disapprove the conduct of the editor or the journalist if it finds that a newspaper or a news agency has violated journalistic ethics.
• Raise awareness and educate voters: Public information campaigns and voter education programs provide accurate information that dispel myths and misconceptions. Such efforts can help voters identify and address intolerance in their own lives and recognize and resist hate speech purveyed by officials, candidates and their supporters, and the media. Longer-term civic education is also important to raising civic literacy levels and reducing the public’s vulnerability to hate speech and calls to violence.

Conclusion

To rid ourselves of the problem, however, we cannot rely on the conscience of politicians. It’s ultimately for voters to send them a clear signal that their votes cannot be bought. Also, there is a need for political will to bring in reforms, so that democracy in India is not only procedural but also substantive in nature. Free and fair elections cannot happen if political outcomes are determined by the money and muscle power of candidates or encouraging hate speech and pitting one community against the other. This discourages genuine candidates from contesting, and winning elections. Election Commission must be strengthened and it’s role must be enhanced to achieve the objective of free and fair elections.