Murdered Mandates & Blistered Bottoms !

 

BY R.K.MISRA

It is often said that politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.

 Huge sums are spent in holding elections and then the popular mandate is subverted by ‘cheating’ political parties. For an unfolding ‘drama’ look Maharashtra-wards, for back issues Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and for potentially emerging scenarios watch-out for Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh where elections are due later this year. By last count, seven states have seen such power play ever since the Narendra Modi- led BJP government took charge at the Centre in 2014.

Power comes through elections and this exercise involves colossal financial  resources and thus commences a vicious cycle that vitiates the entire system. The 2019 general elections, termed the most expensive ever, anywhere , are a case in point.

According to the Centre for Media Studies(CMS),a not-for-profit  research think -tank , a sum of Rs 55,000 to 60,000 crores was spent in the Lok Sabha elections,2019. The report named “Poll Expenditure: The 2019 Elections”, terms it as the most expensive ever, anywhere with an estimated Rs 100 crore spent in each constituency which comes to about Rs 700 per vote. The BJP spent about 45 per cent of the total amount as against  just 20 per cent , it had done in 1998. The Congress which had spent 40 per cent of the total expenditure in 2009 when it was in power, spent between 15-20 per cent in 2019.The total spend in 1998 was Rs 9000 crores. The expenditure permitted by the Election Commission per constituency per candidate in larger states is Rs 70 lakhs.

An analysis of the audit reports submitted by political parties to the Election Commission of India brings out that 18 political parties including 7 national ones spent Rs 6500 crores on elections between 2015 and 2020 and 52.3 per cent or Rs 3400 crores of this amount was spent on publicity alone. BJP spent 56 per cent(over Rs 3600 crores) of the total election outlay of the 18 parties and the Congress 21.41 per cent(over Rs 1400 crores),the two together accounting for 77 per cent of the total five year poll spend. Of this amount the BJP spending on advertisement and publicity was Rs 2000 crores and the Congress Rs 560 crores.

 “As the poll expenditure rises so will the corruption in governance as well”, CMS chairman  N. Bhaskara Rao is quoted saying. And therein lies the rub for the law is skewered in favour of the party in power at the Centre.

Take the case of electoral bonds introduced by the Narendra Modi led BJP government in 2017,ostensibly to bring about transparency in electoral funding. According to  the annual audit report of the BJP submitted to the Election Commission of India(ECI),the party got Rs 210 crores in electoral bonds in 2017-18, which ,as per the Association For Democratic Reforms(ADR) report released on February 9 , 2021 constituted  nearly 95 per cent of all the electoral bonds purchased in the period in question. For the Financial year 2018-19, BJP received Rs 1,450.89 crores and the Indian National Congress(INC) Rs 383.26 crores worth. The ECI data for 2019-20 continues  on the same lines with BJP getting over 75 per cent of the total electoral bonds sold and the Congress about 9 per cent of the total amount of Rs 3,435 crores. According to a written reply in Parliament by union minister of state for finance, Pankaj Chaudhary bonds worth Rs 9208.23 crores have been sold since 2018 when they became effectively available of which Rs 9187.55 crores worth have been encashed by political parties.

While the Modi government came to power promising greater transparency in election funding but the actual fact is that it is more opaque now than ever before. Subsequent disclosures  brought out that both the Election Commission and the Reserve Bank of India had voiced their reservations about the electoral bonds scheme but the objections were over-ruled and the scheme was passed in the Lok Sabha  as part of the Finance Bill  thus doing away with the need to get it passed by the Rajya Sabha. The Opposition  parties have been vocal on the issue and former union minister P.Chidambaram had termed electoral bonds the ’biggest scam of the decade”.

Eminent citizens had in December last year written to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court R.V. Ramanna seeking early listing of some important cases including the one relating to electoral bonds which remains pending for four years though numerous elections have taken place in the interregnum.

Meanwhile a request for urgent hearing on the matter before a Supreme court bench headed by  Chief Justice N.V.Ramanna   by advocate Prashant Bhushan in April this year has  elicited an acknowledging response that the issue was critical and needed an urgent hearing leading to hopes of  early resolution .

The massive monetary exercise-a fair share of it clandestine- surrounding the elections in India and the back-door  subversion of  popular mandates is a fire raging in our back-yard. If we turn our back to it and burn our behinds, we will only end up sitting on our own  painful blisters !.

 (http://odishapostepaper.com/edition/4144/orissapost/page/9)