Centre for all-party meet on electoral reforms

The Union government will convene an all-party meaning early next year to evolve a consensus on electoral reforms covering a wide range of proposals including internet voting and barring criminals from contesting elections, Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid said on Friday.

Speaking at a conference on “Electoral reforms in India - the role of intellectuals” organised by All India Conference of Intellectuals in Bangalore, Khurshid said the Centre was keen on ushering in “broad new paradigm changes” in the electoral system and would achieve the objective through political consensus.

The Centre had an open mind in allowing internet voting or providing the option to political parties to nominate their candidate in case of bypoll, he said.

However, the minister cautioned that allowing  right to reject the candidates during elections could be misused by vested interests. “Our enemies across the border could instigate people and dub it as a referendum against the country,” he said.

Election Commissioner H S Brahma said the Election Commission of India (EC) was considering introducing “paper trail” for electronic voting machine (EVM) from the next  next general elections (2014) to bring in more transparency in the polling proces.

Under the system known as “Voter verifiable paper audit trail,” first mooted in July this year, a paper backup (in form of a print out) for a vote cast on the EVM would be provided to the voter, on demand.

The measure is to address criticism from some quarters that EVM technology is not tamper-proof, he said.

He said the Election Commission has placed before Centre more than a dozen proposals on electoral reforms and sought immediate action to curb paid news and barring candidates against whom charge sheet has been filed in a court of law from contesting elections.

Governor H R Bhardwaj said the EC should take steps to curb money power in elections. He said the land and mining lobbies were channelling corrupt money during election  polluting the entire system.

Later, speaking to reporters, Khurshid said the draft Lokpal bill tabled in the Parliament had provisions that allowed the anti-corruption ombudsman to seek the help from any agency, including the CBI, for investigation.  

Quota for minorities

To a query on the Cabinet decision of carving a sub-quota for minorities within the 27 per cent reservation for OBCs, Khurshid said the provision already existed in Karnataka.