PUNE: Saying that the election process in India is becoming a more costly affair for the government, BJP MP Vinay Sahasrabuddhe said the idea of simultaneous elections across the country was floated with the aim of reducing costs and not with political agenda in mind. He was speaking at the conference for ‘Democratic Reforms for Good Governance’ organised by Pune International Centre on Thursday.
The BJP ideologue said that for India election expenditure is very high. “Lal Krishna Advani used to call India a nation perennially in an election season. There are elections going on in some or other region of the country all year round. This means the work hours of the government machinery as well as expenses are increasing. This makes elections a costly affair and to think of simultaneous elections was with aim of saving these resources.”
Sahasrabuddhe spoke about the democratic reforms that are in the benefit of the country. He said, “The Westminster model and its applicability to the Indian condition has always been a part of debate. We have to stop being status quoist and try to make changes to what is and accept them. One of the things that is getting irrelevant is the poll system where the candidate who gets more votes in his constituency compared to other candidates wins, but on a larger level, even if a party has larger share of votes, it gets less seats and so we need to see if we can implement proportional representation.”
“There is the issue of election expenditure and management. The elections today have become more of a technique than a mandate. The elections are faced by those with monetary power using techniques like election management and data crunching. The registration of parties is also a big issue. It is easier today to register a party than to run an organisation. They have no policy or ideological framework like cadre-based parties.”
