NEW DELHI: Prime Minister V.P. Singh expressed concern over the growing influence of money in elections and appealed to all the parties to put their heads together to devise ways to eliminate it, PTI report.
In his opening remarks at the all party meeting on electoral reforms, he said this growing influence of money power was not peculiar to India but was an issue in parliamentary democracies the world over.
Singh said various options had been suggested to reduce the money power, of which state funding was one, and elected the views of the political parties on how expenditure on elections could be reduced. Whether some common facilities could be provided to candidates in elections, he queried.
The Prime Minister reiterated his earlier decision not to use defense aircraft or helicopters during the coming Assembly elections.
He sought suggestions as to how to prevent caste and communal feelings being whipped during the elections.
The other areas where he sought the opinion of the participants was on the list and proportional representation systems of voting’s, multipurpose or single-purpose identity cards and evolution of a system by which election petitions could be disposed of expeditiously, delimitation of constituencies, rotation of reserved seats and reservation of seats for women,
He drew the attention to the problems faced by the election machinery due to proliferation of Non-serious candidates in some constituencies resulting in contests at times by even 300 candidates and wanted suggestions on how to eliminate this problem.
Article extracted from this publication >> January 19, 1990
