Admitting that elections were now mainly fought by the rich and powerful, Chief Election Commissioner H.S. Brahma said in an interview that the law, however, could not help elections become free of money power. Voters choosing the right candidates was the only way to clean politics, Mr. Brahma said. He hoped public opinion would build around limiting expenditure by parties.

While voter turnouts were growing, cleaning the voter rolls of duplicate names would raise it further, Mr. Brahma said.

The Chief Election Commissioner, in an exclusive interview to Rukmini S., talks about the electoral reforms needed for clean elections.

All States now record 65-70 per cent voter turnout. Can it go further given migration, or is this as high as it can get?

Once the rolls are corrected, once spurious names are removed, then the percentage will go up. The numbers are low now not because our Indians are not going to vote; it is because of the spurious names. Once they are deleted, the percentage will go up by two to three per cent. Any election in 2015-16, we will have turnouts at 84-85 per cent.

Now, with our software… we’re creating a de-duplicated all-India roll. The other thing we’ve started doing from March 3 is to seed Aadhaar information with the voters’ roll. In our southern States, by the end of May they’ll finish the entire job of Aadhaar seeding. This will ensure that the structure will be free from duplicate and spurious names.

It seems like the Election Commission can now successfully conduct peaceful elections. But the new challenge seems to be that of the influence of money in elections. Does the ECI have the tools to take this on?

The Election Commission definitely has sufficient tools. It is a fact that money power plays a role in elections...today elections are fought not only on political ideals or isms, but business and money are also involved.

I think the citizens of this country should be told clearly that voting is not a mere right, and that they must elect the right person, if they want to improve their life and future. We cannot make any law..... a law is not going to solve anything. People should be told that in their own interest they must vote for the right person. This is not a one day’s job, there has to be eternal vigilance.

One of the measures the ECI has talked of in the past to curb money power has been to impose spending limits on political parties. But the Law Commission has recommended against it.

I appreciate the work that the Law Commission has done, and there are many positive points. The Election Commission’s mandate is mainly around candidates, and our focus has to be [on] stopping the abuse of money power by them. But I think the day is not far off, when the people will start asking why there should not be restrictions on spending by political parties. Even if there isn’t a restriction, if they give a correct account, I don’t see any problem. A political party is not a government body, they cannot maintain bureaucrats and they also have problems — maintaining an account of every rupee spent is quite difficult for them.

Source: TH