Has Election Commission fulfilled it’s responsibility to prevent corrupt persons and criminals from entering the parliament and assemblies
Answers
India is the largest and the most diverse democracy in the world. It has largest number of people who have registered to exercise their voting rights in order to chose their government. To manage and administer peaceful elections, an autonomous body called the Election Commission has been established in India. The main responsibilities of this body is to conduct fair and free elections for the two Houses of Parliament – Lok Sabha & Rajya Sabha, state legislatures and the offices of the President and Vice President in India. It isses a mode of conduct for the political parties and enforces it too. Any compains regarding the foul play by the political parties are addressed by the Election Commission.
Hence, we can say that the entire election process, starting from the application of candidates, validation of their enteries and conduction of peacuful elections comes under the roles and responsibilities of the Election Commission. It has the power to make laws and rules regarding the amount of money spent by a party in election propoganda or to decide the minimum requirements that need to be fulfille dby a candidate before gettting a ticket to contect elections. In other words, it acts like a gatekeeper which shortlists people who have the potential to lead and govern the country.
With the growing influence of money on election results, the entry of unethical candidates into the legislative offices is not very uncommon. These leaders with criminal records, tend to bend laws as per their convinience to reap thw maximum benefit of their seats monetarily. It is the foremost duty of the Election Committee to see that incapable candidates cannot contest elections in the first place. Looking at the current situation, I feel, Election Committee needs to strengthen its guidelines and requirements so that only qualified candidates can register to contest elections. It needs to make the Indian democracy healthy again by taking definitive actions against those who try to cheat the system with the glare of their money. It cannot be unseen that many corrupt and unfit candidates are entering the legislative bodies and making the system hollow from its very roots. The Election Commission needs to make more efforts and make stringent laws in order to prevent the largest democracy being played by the rich and the corrupt.