Election Code of Conduct:
After looking at recent announcements by Central Govt. such as “Direct Cash Transfer Scheme” and “Increase in cooking gas cylinder quota from 6 to 9” exactly during the assembly elections in Gujarat, I feel we can propose few improvements to increase accountability, transparency and seriousness of election process. As we surely know that “No penal Action” would be taken against any of the ministers by Election Commission of India.
For example:
Election Commission must categories and specifies each election related offense of violation in the following way
A: Most serious violation such as violence, booth capturing etc.
Punishment: Expulsion of candidate / party from election process
B: Very serious violation such as distribution of money among voters, hate speeches etc
Punishment: 25% of total votes acquired by candidate / party get reduced. For example, if offender candidate gets 100,000 votes then only 75,000 are considered as legal.
C: Serious offense such as announcing various schemes to lure voters in an unethical way. A current govt. announcement falls under this category.
Punishment: 10% of totals votes polled for candidate / party gets eliminated. In such case all Congress candidates in Gujarat looses 10% of their votes.
D: Less serious offenses such as not filing election expenditure in timely manner, exceeding election expenditure, taking rallies without proper permissions etc
Punishment: 5% of votes get eliminated of particular candidate
E: Least serious offenses. These could be creating traffic jams, exceeding noise levels of loud speaker etc.
Punishment: 2% of votes get eliminated of particular candidate
Such mechanism with definitive punishments which can impact election results would not only increase accountability and compliance but it would also make election process very interesting and competitive.
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