Inaugural Shri Shambhu Dutta (Sharma) Memorial Lecture

Electoral Reforms
Delivered by Jagdeep S. Chhokar, at India International Center on April
15, 2017
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Ladies and gentlemen,

It is indeed an honour and a privilege for me to get this unique
opportunity to deliver the inaugural Shri Shambhu Dutta (Sharma)
Memorial Lecture on the first death anniversary of this great man. I feel
very humble even thinking of him. My first contact with him was in late
2008 when he called me on phone saying he wanted to meet me and
asked me to indicate a date and time when he could come to my house.
Having known about him and his work, I said I will come to meet him and
asked him to indicate a date, time, and place where I could come. He said,
very firmly, that since he wanted to meet me, he would come. The tone of
his voice left me in no doubt that there was no scope for further
discussion on the issue.
He came to my house exactly at the time that we had agreed on and was
carrying with him a list of items to be discussed. It took us about half-an-
hour to get through the list, and as soon as that had been done, he said, I
am finished with my agenda. If there is something you have in mind, we
can discuss that, otherwise I will leave now. I insisted, and he kindly
consented, to stay for a bit longer and we had, what I felt, was a very
inspiring conversation. Subsequently, he drafted me into the National
Working Committee of the Gandhian Satyagraha Brigade, which was later
converted into the Gandhian Seva and Satyagraha Brigade. I then met
him regularly during meetings of this Brigade.
I was to learn gradually that my induction was based on the work that the
Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) had been doing, of which I was,
and still am, a founding member. Perhaps a more important reason for my
induction was the enduring interest that the issue of electoral reforms
held for Shambhu Dutta ji. It was also then that I learnt that the Gandhian
Satyagraha Brigade, as it was known then, had been writing letters to
almost everyone who mattered, about barring candidates against whom
charge sheets had been filed well before the elections, from contesting
elections, as recommended by the Election Commission of India from time
to time, last in 2004, as part of a consolidated list of electoral reforms, and
issue that ADR had also been working on.
All this is what led to my involvement in the fasts being observed at Jantar
Mantar by several members of the Gandhian Satyagraha Brigade led by
Shambhu Dutta ji, beginning on January 01, 2011, which culminated in the
commencement of the Fast-unto-Death by five Satyagrahis, on January 30,

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2011, also led by Shambhu Dutta ji. The events towards the end of the
day on January 30, 2011, which led to the postponement of that Fast-unto-
Death, are well known and I do not need to, or plan to, recount them here,
except to say that I was privileged to be involved in that entire process,
and therefore got to see the events firsthand.
Let me now come to the topic of this Memorial Lecture, a topic that was
very dear to Shambhu Dutta ji, Electoral Reforms.
Elections are the most visible manifestation of the operationalization of
democracy, even more so in a large, representative democracy that we, in
India, have chosen for ourselves. It should therefore be obvious and need
no justification that the quality of the electoral process has a very critical
impact on the quality of democracy in a society. Weaknesses or infirmities
in the electoral process can have a very serious deleterious impact on the
overall health of democracy. This is what makes electoral reforms the
starting point, or the bedrock, of all attempts to ensure reasonable health
of any democracy.
History of Electoral Reforms in India
Let us now look briefly at the history of electoral reforms in India.
Not unexpectedly, the need and demand for electoral reforms in India has
been around for a very long time. Just to quote one instance, let me read
out one sentence: All these four decades, especially after 1967, the
demand for electoral reforms has been mounting up. This is what the
Goswami Committee Report, officially called the Committee on Electoral
Reforms, said in May of 1990.
Let me quote some other observations of this Committee:
Leaving now our laurels alone, it becomes imperative to take stock
of the present state of affairs which causes concern and anxiety
because of the existence of the looming danger threatening to cut
at the very roots of free and fair elections.
The role of money and muscle powers at elections deflecting
seriously the well accepted democratic values and ethos and
corrupting the process; rapid criminalisation of politics greatly
encouraging evils of booth capturing, rigging, violence etc.; misuse
of official machinery, i.e. official media and ministerial; increasing
menace of participation of non-serious candidates; form the core of
our electoral problems. Urgent corrective measures are the need of
the hour lest the system itself should collapse.
The Committee goes on to say,
Electoral reforms are correctly understood to be a continuous
process. But attempts so far made in this area did not touch even
the fringe of the problem. They appeared to be abortive. Some of

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 the recent measures like reduction of voting age and anti-defection
law are no doubt laudable and the basic principles underlying those
measures should be appreciated. But there are other vital and
important areas in election field completely neglected and left high
and dry.
It is interesting but sad that what was said in 1990 still sounds
contemporary.
How and why did the Goswami Committee come to be set up? Following
the demand of electoral reforms over four decades, mentioned above,
the then Prime Minister, V.P. Singh called an all-party meeting on January
09, 1990. It was in this all-party meeting that the decision to set up such a
committee was taken. It resulted in the setting up of a committee under
the chairmanship of Shri Dinesh Goswami, the then Law Minister with the
following as members:
1. Shri H.K.L. Bhagat M.P. (Indian National Congress)
2. Shri L.K. Advani M.P. (Bharatiya Janata Party)
3. Shri Somnath Chatterjee M.P. (Communist Party of India)
[Marxist]
4. Shri Ghulam Rasool Mattoo M.P. (National Conference)
5. Shri Chimanbhai Mehta M.P.
6. Shri Indrajit M.P.
7. Shri Homi F. Daji Former M.P. (Communist Party of India)
8. Shri Era Sezhiyan Former M.P. (Janata Dal)
9. Shri V. Kishore Chandra Deo Former M.P. (Congress (S))
10. Shri L.P. Singh Former Governor
11. Shri S.L. Shakdher Former Chief Election
Commissioner

This committee made a total of 107 recommendations. I do not have an

exact count of how many of the 107 recommendations have been
implemented, and to what extent, but I can assure you that a very large
proportion of these have not been implemented, or even considered
seriously, or even considered at all.
The next formal attempt at electoral reforms was in 1998 in the form of
what has come to be popularly known as the Indrajit Gupta Committee
Report. This committee, officially called the Committee on State Funding
of Elections was set up in 1998 with the following members:
1. Shri Indrajit Gupta Chairman
2. Shri Somnath Chatterjee Member
3. Dr. Manmohan Singh Member
4. Shri Madhukar Sarpodar Member
5. Prof. Vijay Kumar Malhotra Member
6. Shri R. Muthiah Member

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 7. Shri Digvijay Singh Member
8. Shri Ram Gopal Yadav Member

The Indrajit Gupta Committee report is about the most often quoted report
on electoral reforms and it is always quoted to support state funding of
elections. However, all those who cite or quote this report with great
approval, seem to completely overlook the opening paragraph of the
Conclusion of the report which says,
Before concluding, the Committee cannot help expressing its
considered view that its recommendations being limited in nature
and confined to only one of the aspects of the electoral reforms may
bring about only some cosmetic changes in the electoral sphere.
What is needed, however, is an immediate overhauling of the
electoral process whereby elections are freed from evil influence of
all vitiating factors, particularly, criminalisation of politics. It goes
without saying that money power and muscle power go together to
vitiate the electoral process and it is their combined effect which is
sullying the purity of electoral contests and affecting free and fair
elections. Meaningful electoral reforms in other spheres of electoral
activity are also urgently needed (Emphasis added).
The next, and in my opinion the most important, document on electoral
reforms till date is the 170th report of the Law Commission of India
submitted to the then Law Minister, Ram Jethmalani, in May 1999. This
report, titled Reform of the Electoral Laws was prepared by the 15th Law
Commission which was chaired by Justice B.P. Jeevan Reddy, a retired
judge of the Supreme Court of India. Given that piecemeal attempts had
not yielded anything worthwhile, and given the complexity of our electoral
system, the Law Commission was requested to take a comprehensive look
at the entire electoral system in the country and suggest what reforms
were needed to make the electoral system in tune with the needs of the
society. The Commission did exactly that and in a very comprehensive
manner. It studied all components of the entire electoral system before
making their recommendations with detailed rationale and justification.
Once again, nothing much has been done by way of implementation of the
recommendations.
The National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution,
headed by Justice M.N. Venkatachaliah, former Chief Justice of India, set
up by the government headed by Atal Behari Vajpayee on February 23,
2000, with some illustrious members such as Justice B.P. Jeevan Reddy,
Chairman, Law Commission of India who authored the 170th report of the
Law Commission, just mentioned; Justice R.S. Sarkaria, former Judge,
Supreme Court of India, of the Sarkaria Commission on Center-State
relations; P.A. Sangma, former Speaker, Lok Sabha; Soli J. Sorabjee, then
Attorney General for India; K. Parasaran, Senior Advocate and former

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Attorney General for India; C.R. Irani, Chief Editor and Managing
Director, The Statesman; Dr. Abid Hussain, former Ambassador of India in
the USA; and Smt. Sumitra G. Kulkarni, former Member of Parliament,
(Rajya Sabha), and current Speaker of the Lok Sabha.
The NCRWC, as it came to be called, submitted its report on March 31,
2002. The report had a separate chapter (Chapter 4) which it chose to title
as Electoral Processes and Political Parties, and made 38
recommendations. Sadly, nothing significant has been done to implement
any of the recommendations either.
The Election Commission of India has been making recommendations to
the Government of India from time to time about various reforms in the
electoral system that the Election Commission cannot make within its own
authority, some of which require making some changes in the Conduct of
Election Rules 1961, the Representation of People Act, 1951, and other
similar rules and legislations. While the government has made some of
these changes from time to time but any major worthwhile changes have
been consistently ignored. The Election Commission compiled 22 of these
ignored recommendations and the then Chief Election Commissioner
wrote to the Prime Minister giving details of these recommendations on
July 05, 2004, and published these on July 30, 2004 to put these in the
public domain. There has been no specific reaction from the government
to these recommendations. The list of 22 reforms, at the last count a few
months ago, was reported to have grown to as many as 39 reforms.
The report of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission, submitted
in 2008, also contained some significant observations on the electoral
system, and made some serious recommendations for electoral reforms.
Sadly, those recommendations have also not found favour with any
government for implementation.
Another attempt was made in 2010. The then Law Minister, M. Veerappa
Moily, and the then Chief Election Commissioner, S.Y. Quraishi, announced
in a joint press conference on December 09, 2010, that seven regional
and one national consultations will be conducted to evolve a national
consensus on electoral reforms, and that will be followed by a
comprehensive new legislation on electoral reforms. The seven regional
consultations were indeed conducted in 2011, in association with the ECI,
the last one being held in Guwahati on June 05, 2011. These were to be
followed by a national consultation for which time was never found. There
were also reports that a draft bill on electoral reforms had been prepared
and had been discussed by the Law Minister with the Prime Minister on
more than one occasion but no concrete action came about.
Yet another episode in this continuing saga was the letter that the then,
and outgoing, Chief Election Commissioner, Dr. S.Y. Quraishi, wrote to the
Prime Minister on April 13, 2012, before demitting office on June 10, 2012.
Dr. Quraishi was personally involved in extensive and repeated

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discussions with the then Law Minister, Veerappa Moily, before the latter
was replaced by Salman Khurshid. Some excerpts from the letter,
accessed by filing an RTI application, given below, exemplify the
frustration of those trying to improve the electoral system in the country:
Hence allow me Sir, to place before you the Commission's deep
disappointment over the fact that a necessary legislation in this
regard is yet to be materialised despite an assurance given to us by
the Hon'ble Minister of Law and Justice.
However, the quality of our elections often gets questioned on
account of certain weaknesses in our electoral process.
Commission's reform proposals have always aimed at addressing
this predicament. Though certain minor reforms have been adopted
by Government and Parliament, the substantial ones have been
actually left out allowing the allegations that politicians are not keen
about the reforms because of their vested interest.
I would like to bring to your kind notice that some proposals which
are of technical nature and require only amendment of Rules within
the competence of the Ministry of Law and Justice, have also been
pending for a long time. This raises questions about the lack of
political will, which causes us deep distress (Italics added).
Then came two reports of the Law Commission of India, the 244th report
on Electoral Disqualifications, submitted on February 24, 2014, and the
255th report titled Electoral Reforms submitted on March 12, 2015. The
244th report recommended the disqualification from contesting elections
after the stage of framing of charges, with substantial safeguards to
prevent misuse. The 255th report made as many as 16 recommendations
covering many aspects of electoral reforms, especially those relating to
election finance.
Finally, the Budget 2017 contained some announcements purportedly
related to electoral reforms, particularly in relation to electoral funding.
The Budget Speech of the Finance Minister contained two paragraphs
under the heading Transparency in Electoral Financing but the actual
amendments proposed in the Finance Bill 2017 told a very different story.
And finally, finally, there was a five-hour debate in the Rajya Sabha on
March 22, 2017, on the subject of electoral reforms. While nothing
concrete was achieved at least in my view; a large number of
commentators said it was a very good development since it was the very
first time that so much time was devoted to electoral reforms in the
Parliament.
The Content of Electoral Reforms
This is an issue on which millions or more words have been said, and
written. There is no dearth of recommendations and suggestions on WHAT

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should be done by way of electoral reforms. Having attended hundreds of
seminars, discussions, round tables, consultations, and what-have-you on
electoral reforms over the years, I know that everyone, and his brother,
has what they consider brilliant ideas on electoral reforms. A large of
number of us believe that we have one, very simple, idea which will
change the face of elections in India and make Indian democracy the envy
of everyone in the world. Obviously, each of the above mentioned
committees and commissions have also made their own
recommendations.
Having said all of the above, I have no right to suggest WHAT needs to be
done by way electoral reforms. But if I dont do that, I apprehend that I will
be held guilty of evading the issue. So, let me put my neck on line and
mention just two actions that I think are likely to have the maximum
impact on how elections are conducted in India.
The first is internal democracy in the functioning of political
parties. I also believe in the adage that democracy is a journey, not a
destination, and therefore I do not expect that there can ever be anything
like a perfect democracy. But, regrettably, our political parties appear to
be the very anti-thesis of democracy. I believe it would really be good for
political parties themselves to become more and more democratic in their
internal functioning. In a recent personal communication, as recent as
April 07, 2017, a leading political scientist of the country wrote the
following:
What perhaps may also be required is the argument that better
organization of parties is in their own interest. That argument does
not come adequately from the reformists and hence they can be
easily set aside as anti-political or anti-party. The starting point
would be that parties are useful and unavoidable in democracy and
therefore, all democrats must consider it necessary to have better
run parties and that if parties run themselves better, they can avoid
the pressures from criminal elements and be more effective.
I have a strong hunch that he wrote this to me since it is quite clear to me
that I am also one of those who comes across as as anti-political or anti-
party. While I will certainly attempt to reform myself, I must also add that
the recommendation of ensuring internal democracy in the functioning of
political parties is neither new, nor mine. The 170th report of the Law
Commission of India, mentioned earlier, contained the following
paragraph:
3.1.2.1. On the parity of the above reasoning, it must be said that if
democracy and accountability constitute the core of our
constitutional system, the same concepts must also apply to and
bind the political parties which are integral to parliamentary
democracy. It is the political parties that form the government, man
the Parliament and run the governance of the country. It is

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 therefore, necessary to introduce internal democracy, financial
transparency and accountability in the working of the political
parties. A political party which does not respect democratic
principles in its internal working cannot be expected to respect
those principles in the governance of the country. It cannot be
dictatorship internally and democratic in its functioning outside
(Italics added).

Given that when this issue is discussed with political parties, almost all of
them claim that they are indeed democratic in their internal functioning; I
have now taken to saying that political parties need to be demonstrably
democratic in their internal functioning. The Law Commission went to the
extent of even preparing the draft of a new section to be added to the
Representation of the People Act, 1951, under the title Organisation of
Political Parties and matters incidental thereto. Of course the report of
the Law Commission has not even presented to the Parliament till now!

The second issue is of financial transparency of political parties.

Those discerning enough would have noticed that this is also included in
para 3.1.2.1 of the 170th report of the Law Commission of India that I just
quoted. And those who follow these issue, and I am sure many of those
present here today do that, would be aware of the on-going effort to bring
political parties in the ambit of the Right to Information Act that has been
going on for several years. I will therefore not recount it for now, unless
someone raises a question about it.

The fact that there were two paragraphs in the Budget Speech 2017 under
the heading Transparency in Electoral Financing, must be taken as an
acknowledgement of the existence of the issue by the political
establishment. But it must not be overlooked that the actual actions taken
to ostensibly put those two paragraphs into action, are going to have an
effect that is precisely the opposite of transparency! Since much has been
written about this and in the very recent past, I will not repeat that but of
course, I am open to discussing it if required.

Let me reiterate that there are many other things that can be done, some
of which the Election Commission of India has repeatedly proposed, but
the government of the day, of any hue or political persuasion, has either
declined to do it or decided not to respond the proposals at all. I am not
going into all those for the interest of time.

How will electoral reforms happen?

The first title I typed for this section was Will electoral reforms happen?
It was on considerable reflection that I decided to change it to the current
one, How will electoral reforms happen? The reason is my firm belief

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and conviction that significant electoral reforms have to happen. These
may not happen in a hurry but happen they will. As the poet, Qamar
Jalalwi, said,
, ,
, , ?

Now coming to some practicalities, the initiation, formulation, and

implementation of electoral reforms rest with the government of the day,
under the overall guidance and direction of the Parliament. We are
therefore in the quagmire where politicians are the ultimate authority to
decide whether reforms which disturb their existing, familiar, and
comfortable arrangement should be implemented or not. Given the
current political milieu of the country, what is likely to happen is any ones
guess. My view is that it is extremely unlikely that any significant
recommendations will be implemented. I say this because of the peep into
history of electoral reforms that I gave you in the earlier part of this talk,
and in particular what happened in the recent Budget Session of
Parliament.
Politics is not, and does not have to be, an undesirable activity. Dictionary
meanings of politics are the science or art of government, or the affairs
or activities of those engaged in controlling or seeking control of a
government. Political activity and political parties are an essential
requirement for the functioning of a democratic society because they
provide the necessary link between people at large and the government.
In a broad sense, politicians serve the function of mobilising and
crystallising public opinion and translating it into executive action. If done
conscientiously and with due diligence, this should result in the good of
the public. Politics, therefore, in fact, is the very highest form of public
service. Notwithstanding this, politicians tend to attract derisive
comments from their publics the world over. The situation in India seems
to be particularly acute. In the words of the Law Commission there has
been a steady deterioration in the standards, practices and
pronouncements of the political class, which fights the elections. Money-
power, muscle-power, corrupt practices and unfair means are being freely
employed to win the elections.
The events of the last few years have not helped in improving the public
image of the political class but improve this, we must.
So, what can we, as Indian citizens, do? However, having worked in this
area of electoral and political reforms for 17 years now, it does seem clear
to me that unless pressure is created from the public at large, neither the
electoral system nor the political class is going to be reformed. What is
needed to generate this pressure from the public at large is sensitisation
of the public, and mobilisation and organization of public opinion.
Unfortunately, this is a task in which the political class specialises. One is

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tempted to think that this can be done with a joint effort by the people at
large, the media, and the judiciary.
Notwithstanding all of the above, We, the People, owe it to the country
and its future to do whatever we can in this regard. And all of us present
here owe it to the life and memory of that great man, Shri Shambhu Dutta
(Sharma) ji, to continue our efforts in this direction. He was a man of many
interests and talents, and made significant contributions in many fields. In
my own small and insignificant way, all I can do is to keep working on
electoral reforms.
This, therefore, I believe is actually the best, perhaps the only, tribute that
I at least, I can pay to him.
I thank you for your patient listening.

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