JOIN USMaharashtra BJP leader Gopinath Munde has landed into trouble with the Election Commission with his public confession that he spent over Rs 8 crore on his election to the Lok Sabha in 2009 while the expenditure limit prescribed by law is Rs 25 lakh. After the election he had filed his expenditure accounts under the Representation of People Act which said that his spending was Rs 19.3 lakh. The Election Commission has issued a notice to him to show reason why he should not be disqualified for suppressing or misrepresenting the actual expenditure. Munde’s admission was not a slip of the tongue or an inadvertent confusion with figures. He was talking about the need for state funding of elections and the statement was a conscious one. Therefore it can be taken only as true.
It is well-known that the prescribed expenditure limit for elections at any level is unrealistic and candidates spend much more than that. Parties and contestants wantonly violate the norms. One of the most important sources of black money in the country is election funding. It is also intimately linked with corruption, cronyism and patronage. This is admitted by leaders and parties but no one has taken the initiative to mend the faulty system. Munde’s statement shows that a leader has become so nonchalant as to even ignore the consequences of violation of the law. It is wrong to praise him for his frankness. The enforcement system is not good enough to check violation of laws. But should it be so weak as to be unable to take action against a person who, for whatever reason, admits in public that he has violated the law? If even ignorance of law is no defence, admission of violation should certainly carry a penalty. The fact that others are also guilty of the same offence does not absolve an offender of his wrong action.
It is a measure of cynicism and the acceptance of permissiveness in the system that the commission’s notice has been taken with some amusement. The law may be insufficient or inadequate. But if public personalities confess to or brag about violating it, and get away with it, it creates a much more unacceptable situation. It concerns not just the electoral law but the rule of law as such. Munde’s admission is another reason for the political class to initiate reforms to clean up the political and electoral funding system in their own and in national interest.