In our elections most of the candidates put by political parties are career politicians or thugs or both. The public is left with no choice other than to vote for the lesser evil. Under the constitution, there is something called Section 49-O which allows the voter to reject all the candidates on the ballot
So what’s the big deal, you ask?
Well, here it is:apparently, if the election is countermanded owing to negative votes, not one of the candidates who stood for the earlier election can contest the re-election.
Now imagine the consequences. Imagine what would happen if each time a party put up a goon, the voters forced an expensive re-election. The mind boggles. [Just do it!]
For such an event to happen there has to be tremendous coordination by the non-political voters. There also has to be a grassroots efforts to make this into a mass movement within a constituency, which currently looks impractical. Even if a re-election is forced, career politicians will always find a way to get their folks in for in the circle of life, for every Lalu who is convicted, there is a Rabri Devi to take his place.
Having some good candidates would be a solution. The troubles of a re-election doesn’t seem worth it, unless there are good candidates queuing up.
Can you cite any reference where this particular section is present in the constitution
Akash,
Here you go
http://lawmin.nic.in/ld/subord/cer1.htm
This is almost impossible to realize in practice on a nationwide scale unless the levels of education go up significantly. Else, ‘dodgy’ candidates will find safe havens in remote constituencies with little or no education.
Also, instead of an entry in Form 17A, I would prefer to have a kind of ‘vote out’ or ‘no confidence’ button on the polling machine or the ballot paper. This would be in line with the ‘secret ballot’ principle. Maintaining a list of negative voters (by the way of entries in Form 17A) would keep an avenue open for intimidation of these voters.