Bye-Elections – who should pay!

The general elections in India are a mammoth exercise, with over 600 million voters, and about one million polling booths in the country.

Though the magnitude was not so much in the recently concluded assembly elections to the five states and few bye-elections, Election Commission of India has done a remarkable job of conducting a smooth election. Of course, even after their best efforts, they could not control the flow of black money entirely, which is understandable given the complexities in India.

Nonetheless, the point am attempting to touch upon is the 2 provisions of law concerning elections (cited below) which deserves a re-look,

The ability to become a minister without winning an election provided they get elected from a constituency within a period of 6 months

The legal background for this can be found in Article 164 of the Constitution of India which deals with ‘Other provisions as to Ministers’. Article 164 (4) is relevant, which reads as under:

“A minister who for any period of six consecutive months is not a member of the Legislature of the State shall at the expiration of that period cease to be a minister”.

Now, to cite an example from the recently concluded elections, Mamata Banerjee who has done the unthinkable of uprooting the Left from West Bengal after 34 long years, will become the Chief Minister. The repercussions are;

- There will be a vacancy in a lok sabha
- She has to get elected from an assembly constituency in the next 6 months.

We are looking at 2 bye-elections within a period of 6 months as in terms of section 151A of The Representation of the People Act, 1951 – a bye-election to fill up a casual vacancy shall be held within a period of six months from the date of the occurrence of the vacancy. The intent of having a bye-election is noble as a constituency should not go unrepresented for a long time.

However, one should think of the money and machinery to be deployed in conducting an election, both by the state and the candidate. According to an estimate from Centre for Media Studies, political parties and candidates spent a whopping Rs. 10,000 crore (including Rs.3,000 crore by the Election Commission) in the last lok sabha elections.

For a candidate, the current ceiling of spent is Rs.40 lakhs for a lok sabha seat and Rs 16 lakhs for an assembly seat and it would be naïve to think that these limits can be met. Apart from money, the logistics of conducting an election is also a nightmare.

Ability to contest from 2 constituencies at the same time

This prerogative given to candidates has its roots in Section 33 (7) of The Representation of the People Act, 1951 which states that ‘a person cannot contest elections from more than two constituencies for a lok sabha election or an assembly election’.

This provision also results in the same scenario of bye-elections if the candidate contesting from two constituencies wins both.

It is pertinent to note that the Committee of Electoral Reforms formed by the Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India which submitted its report to the Cabinet in December 2010 has recommended that a person should not be allowed to contest from more than one constituency at a time.

Should we not have a law to ensure that any bye-election aimed at facilitating the needs of a political party should be at their expense and not on tax payer’s money and restrict state funding for instances like death of an incumbent member etc?