Former Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) of India, Shahabuddin Yaqoob Quraishi, in an interview with The Indian Express, said that the Election Commission must not be dragged into politics. Commenting on the issue of poll promises, he said that the apex body doesn’t have the power to monitor these promises or even to punish the violators.
Quraishi said that there is no law in the country which restricts political parties from making promises or distributing freebies, but the EC should not be drawn into this debate. ” It is for the Parliament to make a law on the subject,” he said.
Further commenting on the poll promise issue, Quraishi stated, “It seems the Supreme Court was conscious of the fact that it has no power, which is why it pronounced that this cannot be described as a ‘corrupt practice’ under the RP (Representation of the People) Act. It passed the buck to the EC to call a meeting of political parties, and, based on discussion, frame necessary guidelines. Well, if it is not a corrupt practice, what power does the EC have to issue any guidelines?”
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On allegations of the EC taking a U-turn on the freebie debate, the former CEC said that he disagrees with the allegations because the EC was directed by the Supreme Court to enter the picture, and had not taken up the case on its own.
“The EC came into the picture only after having been directed, rather harshly, by the Supreme Court to do so. If indeed there is an issue with political parties making irresponsible promises, then the Court should have declared it a corrupt practice, which it has not, because the Court has gone by the letter of the law,” Quraishi said.
He added that in 2013, the poll body had carried out an exercise to call political parties and frame guidelines, wherein parties were asked to make promises responsibly and that parties needed to inform the electorate how the manifesto promises were going to be met and financed, and put it on the party’s website. If parties were not providing the information, all the EC can do, Quraishi said, is to “admonish them.”
He also mentioned in the interview that the EC has no power to amend the RP Act as this is a legislative domain, and that it does not even have the power to impose a “token fine”, or even deregister a party for even the “gravest of violations of the model code of conduct” as the Supreme Court had itself denied this power to the poll body 20 years ago.
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Quraishi called the freebies debate a subjective issue. “Besides, the ‘freebies’ are usually given by the government, and not by the Opposition parties, because they have the resources to do so. So how is one to judge what a freebie is and what a welfare scheme is? Your freebie is my welfare scheme, and vice-versa,” he said.
