Lack of teeth blunts EC bite on poll freebies

Notwithstanding adverse Supreme Court comments, political parties would be able to offer whatever freebies they want through their election manifestos.

Updated on: Oct 24, 2013, 01:35:11 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Notwithstanding adverse Supreme Court comments, political parties would be able to offer whatever freebies they want through their election manifestos.

The Election Commission has failed to find a suitable mechanism to regulate freebies offered by parties through their manifestos. “It would be difficult to regulate manifestos without curbing freedom of speech of the political parties guaranteed in the Constitution,” a senior EC official said.

The commission is also of the view that imposing curbs, which the parties refuse to implement would not be an exercise worth undertaking. A suggestion to get the manifestos vetted by the commission has been rejected as it would lead to infringement of the parties’ freedom to declare public policy. Moreover, the commission believes that the voters should be the best judge on the promises made by parties.

The commission had held consultations with the political parties on bringing the manifestos under its model code of conduct. Not even a single political party had agreed to the SC’s suggestion of putting curbs on announcement of freebies. The court had directed the commission to come out with guidelines to bring the party manifestos under the model code’s ambit.

“It would be improper for the commission to start interfering in manifestos,” a senior Congress leader said, adding that many freebies have lead to empowerment of those who cannot afford high-cost services. The UPA government is planning to give free mobiles and tablets to the 300 million poor people across India before the next general elections. Samajwadi Party and Shiromani Akali Dal had distributed free laptops to college-going students after winning the last assembly elections.

Caught in a predicament, the EC would be coming out with generic guidelines advising parties not to make announcements that are in violation of the model code of conduct and disturbs the electoral level playing field. The commission has already taken over two months to frame these guidelines.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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