Imphal, October 23 2010: The Senior Citizens for Society (SCS), Manipur in collaboration with the Campaign for Electoral Reforms in India (CERI), Karnataka would be organising a North East Regional Consultation on "Electoral Reforms in India" on October 30 at 10 am at Hotel Imphal here.

Interested citizens and stakeholders may attend the consultation, invited General Secretary of SCS, L Sadananda through a press release.

The press release said, "Free and fair election is the index of democracy.

India is known as the largest democracy in the world, yet in the absence of a truly free and fair electoral system, democracy in India provides a happy place only for a small minority of rich and powerful people and deprivation to a vast majority of citizens.

The glaring defects and short comings in the present Majoritarian Electoral System in India can hardly be lost sight of elections in India since independence have shown that even less than 10% of votes polled in a given electoral constituency can win the seat" .

L Sadananda further said in his press release that the present electoral system in India encourages corruption, muscle power and money power, communalism, etc.

to gain the slight margin of winning votes.

The parties that came to power are not mandated by the citizens.

Only parties that have the power to manipulate voters either through money or muscle power or both, are able to come to power.

In the 15th Lok Sabha, 2009 there are 300 crorepati MP and in the Rajya Sabha there are 100 crorepati MPs including the richest having a total asset of Rs 300 crores.

In the present Lok Sabha there are 150 MPs with criminal records including 73 with serious criminal charges.

These facts speak volumes of the state of affairs in Indian democracy under the present Majoritarian Electoral System.

No doubt, India has been witnessing sporadic clamour for electoral reforms.

However such clamour has been restricted to cleaning up the existing system and has not been extended to critically examining the legitimacy of the system itself in the frame work of a mature democracy, the General Secretary of SCS said.

Comment