Mandatory Voting

Bill implying voting on residents for the elections of local governing bodies has been passed by the much-discussed Gujarat state government. According to this Gujarat Local Authorities Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2009 if a voter fails to vote for the reasons other than the prescribed rules, he will be put in the ‘defaulter voters’ list & will have his license cancelled, passport debarred, won’t get the loans from the banks, will not be eligible to apply for the government jobs & so on. While election commission has proclaimed that it will have to be assessed whether it is feasible & practicable to implement the new concept, the chief Minister of Gujarat Mr. Narendra Modi on the other hand has roared in his usual style & has asked to leave the state of Gujarat to those who are not compliant with the decision. Since last many years the issue of making voting compulsory was being discussed again & again in public debates. Mr. Modi who believes more in implementation rather than debates have dared to step up towards true democracy by getting the bill passed.

As we all know that circus of Indian politics revolves around horse trading, money power, muscle power & opportunistic politicians, one of the way to restrict these things is to elevate & promote candidates having good character & strong political will to serve the people. But these candidates would get elected only when maximum number of educated people will vote. Contradictorily the fact says that when voting percentage in educated cities like Pune & Dombivli barely touches figure of 40, villages with enormous illiteracy in Gadchiroli district have done sent percent voting. It means people who are wiser, cleverer, can make decisions by analyzing the ground reality & are less likely to be the victims of baits like alcohol & money remain dormant. On the other side poor, illiterate people who could be easily deceived & could be easily bought are religiously participating in this important democratic process. Passed bill which also seeks to make the negative voting option available for the voters, could prove to be the remedy on this vital problem. But it is yet unknown whether button of negative voting option would be there on the electronic voting board itself or voter will have to suffer & go through some other complex process to cast his negative vote.

In the legislative assembly Congress party has strongly opposed the bill terming it to be the unconstitutional but at the same time has supported to the amendment in the bill which asks to give 33 to 50 % reservation for women in the local governing bodies. Rather they have asked for the two separate bills to be produced in the assembly for ‘compulsory voting’ & ’50 % reservation for women in local authorities’. It has to be taken into consideration that Indian constitution can not be kept unaltered forever. Periodically many changes have already been made in our constitution. So the claim of this bill going beyond the constitution could not be corroborated. Constitution is not the set of rules which is to be followed religiously for infinite amount of time nor does it mandatory that makers of the constitution did not make some law means we should not contemplate for the same today in 2009. Contexts do change as the time proceeds. It is right that as the election commission says there might be practical problems to implement this bill. When countries like Chilli have made it compulsory to cast the vote, people have found the way out by not registering their names in the voters list. With this reality in mind it needs to be noted that people especially Indians will find the way out to get escaped from the constraints implied by the new bill. This does not mean that new laws are not to be made nor does it imply that each new law made would prove to be useless. Every new change or revolutionary decision always appears impossible & impractical to get into reality at the beginning. So rather than criticizing the decision one has to look at the same as an experiment to strengthen the democracy which has to be implemented nation wide in future if turns out to be successful in Gujarat.

SAURABH JOGLEKAR

E-mail - saurabh.a.joglekar@gmail.com

Date – 23^rd December, 2009