National party for national election and one common election for all purposes will save lot of money and time, both for the government and the individual or political party participating in the election process.
There must be two or three political parties in the election fray and the constitution should have such provision which can restrict regional parties to confine them at regional level only.
One suggestion in my opinion is to declare those parties which have consistently secured more than 15 to 20 % of votes polled or more than 10 % of total votes as national parties and only such parties will be eligible for participating in the election for the Parliament. Secondly, Political parties which have network in at least 10 out of 20 big states should only be treated as fit for contesting Parliament election.
Individuals who secure less than 10% of votes must be fined with at least ten lac rupees and political parties which secure less than 20% of votes should be fined with the same amount.
If regional parties are inclined to participate in such election they will have to declare before election that they will fight under the banner of which national party.
Another way to make the election effective and fruitful is to avoid direct election system for Parliament. because each state have different priorities and preferences .As such election should be conducted only for state assemblies and out of every five MLAs, one should be nominated as MP for Parliament either directly by concerned political parties or election commissioner based on certain predefined logics and principles.
National parties, say BJP has 100 MLA’s in the state of MP; they will declare 20 as MP who will participate in Parliament proceedings. Similarly a group of five MLAs will decide the name of one member will go for Parliament.
Alternately government may declare one constituency as representative for Parliament.
Whatever may be the consensus in this regard , I am of the strong opinion that number of political parties participating in the election for Lok Sabha should be bare minimum and there should not be frequent election, one for assemblies, another for Parliament and third for Panchayat or Municipality.
One combined election should be made enough and member for different organs at different levels should be elected through one and only one process of election in five years. This will not only save huge expenses of political parties and the government but also help in mitigating the pain of coalition politics and avoid incident of mutual mudslinging and leg pulling between state government and central government. Besides voters will find it easy to decide as to who is responsible for non performance and lack of development in their area.
Danendra Jain, Ganaraj Choumuhani Agartala
6th May 2009
CAclubindia
