3. What is at Stake
2 Million Elected Representatives
1 out of 800 Indian will be an elected representative
Having authority to dispense Lakhs of Crores of Public money
Politics is now a serious business
543 Lok Sabha Seats
250 Rajya Sabha Members : 12 nominated 238 elected
4129 Vidhan Sabha Seats
454 Legislative council seats in 6 states
~600 Zilla Parishads with at least 50 to 75 members
~240000 Gram Panchayat with 7 to 17 members
4. Why need money
• Success in elections leads to achieving positions &
direct or indirect influence on business decisions
• Many businessmen & successful professionals find
comfort in realizing perks that even money cant buy
VIP Culture in Democracy is a driver
• High decibel campaigning including short term
benefits (distribution of free goods i.e. laptops/Tv/
food grains/cash or in kind) to voters can gain above
two objectives leading to spending money
• Not all have it & it leads to Black Money
& What is being spent…??
5. What is being spent
• Avg. money spent by candidates on Loksabha
Election
– 5-6 Crores per candidate
• ~ 20 Crores per Loksabha Seat (4-5 Candidates)
– > 10,000 Crores per Lok Sabha Election
• Average money spent by candidates in Vidhan Sabha
Seats
– ~ 1 Crores
• 3-5 Crores per Vidhan Sabha Seats
– ~ 15000 – 20,000 Crores Vidhan Sabha Elections
Add Zilla Parishad & Panchayat & we have a staggering cost in
Excess of 50,000 Crores
6. Impact of Power to assets
• 18% of candidates analyzed by ADR have
declared criminal cases against themselves
• Of these, 8% have serious criminal cases
against them
• 30% of LS MPs have criminal cases registered
against them
• Average assets of MPs in LS tripled from 2004
to 2009
7. What is the source
• Donations to Political Parties : Accounted
• Donations to Political parties : Unaccounted in cash
or kind
– Payment of expenses such as events costs including
Aircraft Charter etc.
• Legislature’s constituency fund plough back
• Individual’s funds either earned through clear or
dubious means such as kick backs etc.
Wasteful expenditure & source of corruption in regular life post elections as
either successful candidates or their near & dear ones try to offset costs incurred
in elections by compromising decisions in management of public funds
8. Term related suggestion..
• The 5 year term of ruling can be reduced to 3 years of
ruling. This can cause the following transformations:
– Judging the performance of the administration is faster and loss
to the exchequer can be reduced accordingly
– Keeps the ruling party on it’s toes for the incentive to continue
implementation of party’s foreign, domestic and economic
policy
– This will give public more power in elections
– Most of the demands made by public should be met sooner
– Disadvantage: Increased cost to the EC due to higher number of
elections
– However, the relative merits outweigh potential risks
9. What can be done
• State Funding of elections: i.e. providing airtime on
television/print-media for campaigning; defined public
meetings
– That is an easier answer difficult to implement
• Impart effective political education in democracy and for
democracy and in citizenship responsibilities so that the right
kind of representatives are elected and kept fully accountable
to the people
• Decentralization of power down to the grassroots levels and
building multi-tiers of Government from below in a bottom-
up instead of the present top down approach
• Direct elections only at local levels with the upper tiers filled
by representatives indirectly elected by an electoral college
consisting of the representatives manning the lower tiers
10. Some other measures..
• Representation by providing seats to recognized political
parties in proportion to the votes obtained by them
• Voting
– Online
– Compulsory
• Debar all legislators from being appointed as chairpersons of
various state undertakings, also debar them from any non-
ministerial post other than chairmanship of legislative
committees
• Limit of two terms for any political position
• Election linked to minimum votes, qualification & controlling
candidate’s criminal background with effective law
• Hold State level and parliamentary level elections at the same
time to reduce election expenditure
11. Some other measures…
• Use of technology on deployment of public funds
– E – Auctions of public contracts
• Use of technology in distribution of public schemes
to reduce leakage
– Aadhar/Bio-records
• Implementation of a ‘Whistleblower law’ to promote and
protect people who come forward with reports of
inappropriate conduct.
• In the end, we will need to build character of the nation
which is responsible in all its behavior which will reflect
in election, governance & reduce influence of money in
decision making in all spheres…
12. Some other measures…
• The RTI (Amendment) Bill, 2013 seeks to insert an
explanation in section 2(h) of the Act which states
that any association or body of individuals
registered or recognized as political party under
the Representation of People Act, 1951 will not
be considered as public authority which was
missing in the act passed in 2005 RTI act
• Implementation of a helpline similar to 311 of the
USA that allows for direct contact to the
government or an appropriate authority
