NEW DELHI, May 30: With just a week to go before the Election Commission notifies the schedule for the next presidential elections, the government appears unlikely to concede the Commission's demand for an ordinance to knock out non-serious candidates.

Buoyed by its success in getting rid of non-serious candidates in the last general elections, the Commission was hoping that raising the amount of security deposit and the number of proposers and seconders will result in a sharp decline in candidates.

Officials in the Ministry of Law and Justice said there was no move afoot to promulgate an ordinance to bring about amendments to the Presidential and Vice-Presidential Elections Act, 1952, as has been demanded by the Election Commission.

``There has been no decision in this regard,'' a senior Ministry official said today.

As far back as February this year, Chief Election Commissioner, M S Gill, had written to the Government that the necessary amendments be made to the Act, but to no avail.

For long the Election Commission nurtured the hope that the government would make the changes during the Budget session of Parliament. But the Budget session came and went with no thought being spared for the amendments.

With no signs of movement by the Ministry of Law and Justice, and time running out for the conduct of the Presidential poll, Gill sent in a reminder on May 16. This too appears to have fallen on deaf ears since there has been no action forthcoming.

The Commission is seeking an increase in the security deposit from the current Rs 2,500 to an appropriate level which could be as high as Rs 15,000 or even higher.

More importantly, the Commission has also suggested that the number of proposers and seconders be raised from the present ten each to twenty each.

What this would mean is that each candidate would need at least 40 backers for his candidacy to be validated, a tall order for the non-serious candidate filing his papers for a lark or for some free publicity.

``For a serious candidate supported by two major parties, it should not be difficult to find 40 persons to support his or her candidature,'' Commission officials said.

For example, the last elections to the highest office had four candidates in the fray. Apart from frontrunner Shanker Dayal Sharma and his chief opponent G G Swell, the race also included noted lawyer Ram Jethmalani and perennial poll contestant, Kaka Joginder Singh better known as ``Dharti-Pakad''.

The largest number of candidates in a Presidential poll was in 1967 when 17 candidates were in the fray during Zakir Hussain's bid for office. Nine of these candidates did not fetch a single vote.

Two years later, when elections were unexpectedly called, following Hussain's death in office, there were 15 candidates in the contest who saw a bitter fight between Indira Gandhi-backed V V Giri and Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy, who was fielded by the ``syndicate'' in the Congress.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.