Unfulfilled Election Promises; Defections; Inaction of Governors and Speakers—It is Time the President Acted on Vital Issues
Hyderabad, April.10: Two important Constitutional authorities of the country have come out with certain observations and suggestions on major issues pertaining to electoral reforms, like political parties not keeping up the election promises, opportunistic alliances leading to instability of elected Governments, and delimitation of the parliamentary constituencies.
Participating in an all India seminar on ‘Economic Reforms with reference to Electoral Issues’ at New Delhi on Saturday, President Pranab Mukherjee had stressed on the need to look at the legal provisions on the delimitation of the Parliamentary Constituencies with a view to increase their number. He pointed out that the Lok Sabha today represents the population figure of 1971 census, whereas our population has increased manifold in the recent decades. He said that to give true expression to the will of the people, it is time they thought of increasing the number of constituencies by amending the Laws.
The President also said that a strong electoral system was necessary to strengthen the country’s democratic structure and the political parties should ensure that their members behaved in a responsible manner. He also said the political parties should formulate their own code of conduct voluntarily.
The other Constitutional authority, the Chief Justice of India, Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar, had touched upon still more important and major issue of the failure of the political parties to fulfil the election promises. He emphasized that the political parties should be held accountable for the routinely unfulfilled promises made in their election manifestos and election speeches. Election manifestos have lost their values and become a mere piece of paper owing to the short-term memory of citizens, but the political parties should be made accountable for the unfulfilled promises, he stressed, and added that the parties gave brazen excuses to justify non-fulfillment of the promises.
It is quite pertinent to recall, in this context, that almost of the political parties have failed to fulfil the major election promises both at the National and at State levels. For over eight months on the eve of 2014 elections, the BJP prime-Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi and other leaders of the party repeatedly promised to bring back Lakhs of Crores of Rupees stashed in foreign banks,within 100 days of coming to power. As is well-known, the BJP Government had failed to fulfil this promise even after nearly three years of it’s regime. The TDP supreme Chandrababu Naidu had, on the eve of elections, promised inclusion of Kapus in Backward classes list and also unemployment allowance to the unemployed youth. Both these promises, as also some others, remain unfulfilled even now. Similarly, the TRS President K Chandrasekhar Rao had, on the eve of elections, promised to make a Dalit as Chief Minister of the State. People are aware that this was not fulfilled.
These facts and the developments in the recent past in regard to defection of elected Members from one party to the other, the failure of the Presiding Officers and the Governors to take a decision on defections and other related matters, call for some drastic electoral reforms and it is necessary on the part of the top constitutional authority – the President—to give a direction to the Parliament to come out with suitable amendments to the relevant Laws. As a matter of fact, the President had, in 2013 and again in 2015, had expressed his displeasure over the deteriorating values and conditions in the law-making bodies, and other issues.
The President is all powerful and it is for him to act tough and see that the Laws are amended to correct the loopholes in them. It is felt necessary to elaborate in detail, the powers and functions of the Governors, the Speakers of Lok Sabha and State Legislatures not only on defection but also on their powers to suspend an elected member from the House for long periods, inviting the leaders of the majority party to form Government after elections, etc.