Elections in India: The financial black box!

Till some time back, India was a third world nation. We have bettered that statistic quite meaningfully in the last decade. However, there is another statistic that is quite stark. The national commission on electoral reforms once remarked that the general election in India is eqquivalent to consucting polls in All Europe, US, Australia and Canada, all at once. That is perhaps because the population of India exceeds all these nations put together! The statistic shared above is the total cost of an election borne by the exchequer or rather the tax payer! Over the last 40 years the cost of conducting a general election in India has shot up by a multiple of 770! My estimate about the spends this year is above 2000 crores! Bear in mind, this to be the cost of general elections and not the state elections, which is borne by the respective state governments! The government spends the money on on deployment of security personnel and polling staff, setting up polling stations, purchase of electronic voting machines, and issuance of photo identification cards. Well, that is it as far as the government spends are concerned!

When the money blown up by the political parties, candidates and the private sources is concerned, there are no tabs! Political funding knows no accounting and measures! There are strict legal limits on the amount of money a candidate can spend on an election campaign. According to the Election Commission's rules, in bigger constituencies a candidate can spend up to Rs 25 lakh (Rs 2.5 million). In other constituencies, it varies between Rs 10 lakh (Rs 1 million) and Rs 25 lakh. Supporters of a candidate can spend as much as they like to help out with a campaign. But they have to get the candidate's permission in writing to do so. There is a legislative loophole in here, Explanation 1 to section 77(1) of the Representation of the Peoples Act 1951, under which amounts spent by persons other than the candidate and his agent are not added to his/her election expenses. This means a candidate can spend as much as he likes without violating the ceiling on poll expenses. All additional expenditure, when revealed, can be attributed to the party or friends of the candidate. Thus a Ambani funded Narendra Modi campaign can spends millions and millions more, (in return of trade favours later), without Narendra Modi even accouting for what he spent on and how much did he spend!

While parties are allowed to spend as much money on campaigns as they want, recent Supreme Court judgments have said that unless a political party can specifically account for the money thus spent, it will be added to the election expenses of the candidates concerned. The accountability thus imposed on candidates and parties has curtailed some of the more extravagant campaigning that used to be a feature of Indian elections.

It is time to take the legislation and the audits further into each candidate, his constituency and his spends! The first one is to put a cap on electoral spending by candidates! This has to include donations and gifts by friends, well wishers, supporters, followers and every one else! Such blind spending imbalances the polls and is simply a "bribe" issued to people for their votes! These need to be audited and defaulters to be stripped off their membership of houses!

It is also absolutely essential to do statutory audits of the national parties polling in the elections in terms the source and the spending of their funds! If SEBI can demand audits of companies listed in the stock excahnges, i dont see any reason why EC cannot ask full audits of the parties which go to poll in every election!

After all, this is money from the people, of the people and for the people. WHy not use it judiciously!