TIMES NEWS NETWORK
New Delhi: Reiterating their demand for electoral reforms,Team Anna on Thursday met the Election Commission and sought inclusion of the right to reject option in electronic voting machines.
During their meeting,Team Anna demanded that candidates against whom a court has framed charges be barred from contesting elections.Hazare,with Santosh Hegde,Prashant Bhushan,Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi,met CEC S Y Quraishi.The team raised issues like inclusion of form 49(O),wherein a voter can say he/she doesnt want to vote for any candidate.
According to Team Anna,the meeting was very useful.After the meeting,Hazare said the right to reject was very important and that it would help in cleansing the electoral scenario.To a question on reports about government plans to divest the commission of the power to oversee model code of conduct,Hazare said it was wrong if the government was planning to do so.The EC is an independent body.The government should not have any hold on the body.If there is interference,then the body will lose its power.If the government does so,then there is no point talking about independence of the Election Commission, he said.
Times View
The right to reject would be an important addition to the armoury of the ordinary citizen in dealing with corrupt or arrogant leaders.At the moment,the electorate is often forced to choose between corrupt or otherwise undesirable candidates and settles for the lesser evil.If the law were to allow for elections to any constituency to be declared null if the number of votes rejecting all the candidates exceeded those polled by any of them that could change drastically.Of course,the law would also have to specify that in the fresh election to follow none of the rejected candidates would be able to file their nominations.The Indian voter today is vastly more empowered than she was a couple of decades ago and this would be another step in the right direction.
-TOI
New Delhi: Reiterating their demand for electoral reforms,Team Anna on Thursday met the Election Commission and sought inclusion of the right to reject option in electronic voting machines.
During their meeting,Team Anna demanded that candidates against whom a court has framed charges be barred from contesting elections.Hazare,with Santosh Hegde,Prashant Bhushan,Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi,met CEC S Y Quraishi.The team raised issues like inclusion of form 49(O),wherein a voter can say he/she doesnt want to vote for any candidate.
According to Team Anna,the meeting was very useful.After the meeting,Hazare said the right to reject was very important and that it would help in cleansing the electoral scenario.To a question on reports about government plans to divest the commission of the power to oversee model code of conduct,Hazare said it was wrong if the government was planning to do so.The EC is an independent body.The government should not have any hold on the body.If there is interference,then the body will lose its power.If the government does so,then there is no point talking about independence of the Election Commission, he said.
Times View
The right to reject would be an important addition to the armoury of the ordinary citizen in dealing with corrupt or arrogant leaders.At the moment,the electorate is often forced to choose between corrupt or otherwise undesirable candidates and settles for the lesser evil.If the law were to allow for elections to any constituency to be declared null if the number of votes rejecting all the candidates exceeded those polled by any of them that could change drastically.Of course,the law would also have to specify that in the fresh election to follow none of the rejected candidates would be able to file their nominations.The Indian voter today is vastly more empowered than she was a couple of decades ago and this would be another step in the right direction.
-TOI
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