The law as prize chump

Given the peculiar arithmetic under which the
Election Commission operates, 21 seats count for less than five because they are all found in one state.

If the law supposes that,” said Mr Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, “the law is a ass - a idiot.”

The second part of that passage contains one of the better known quotations in English literature, but most people miss the point — Dickens was actually castigating the laws of his day. However he did it so cleverly — putting the words in the mouth of a pompous, blustering oaf — that he got away with it.

The Bumbles of the world, in our day as much as in Victorian England, can, occasionally, be correct. Look no farther for proof of that assertion than the curious conflict between the Election Commission of India and the CPM. The constitutional body has asked the Big Brother of the Left Front why it should not lose its status as a national party.

I have made it clear over the years, not least in this column, that I have very little sympathy for the Marxists, but this is going too far. Unfortunately, the Election Commission cannot be blamed as it is merely following the strict letter of the law. It just happens to be a case where the law really is asinine.

There is a lot of confusion about what qualifies a party as ‘national’ or otherwise. It should, in theory, be simple: decide on the basis of how many Members of Parliament are attached to a party, how many Members of the Legislative Assembly belong to a party, or how many votes a party has polled. Yet this is just where the complications arise!

The current set of regulations has made a pig’s breakfast of something that should be really quite simple. They specify that any party which wishes to qualify for the status of a national party must meet one of the following criteria in four different states:

First, it should have at least one Member of Parliament in the Lok Sabha out of every 25 that the state elects. Alternatively, it must have one Member of the Legislative Assembly for every 30 in the Assembly. Finally, the criterion could be that it wins a certain fixed percentage of the votes polled. Achieving any of these in four states is all it takes to win the ‘national’ status.

I hope you see the fallacy in this. Giant Uttar Pradesh elects 85 Members of Parliament whereas, say, Sikkim has just one representative in the Lok Sabha. Assume that you have a party which succeeds in winning the contests from Sikkim, Nagaland, Mizoram, and Manipur — all full-fledged states in the Union of India. That party then immediately qualifies as a ‘national’ party as per the rules.

But what is the ground reality? Sikkim, Nagaland, and Mizoram each elect just one Member of Parliament, while Manipur has two of them. That adds up to a grand aggregate of five, fewer than the cities of Delhi or Mumbai.

Continuing with our hypothesis, let us imagine that another party wins a quarter of the seats from Uttar Pradesh in the same general election. It does not, however, win any seats or otherwise register its presence in any other state. Under the same set of rules, it is unworthy of being a ‘national’ party. Given the peculiar arithmetic under which the Election Commission operates, 21 seats count for less than five simply because they are all found in one state.

This is not entirely hypothetical, by the way. Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party succeeded in winning 26 seats, all of them in Uttar Pradesh. And I can readily conceive of a situation where a party sweeps the four states in the North-East mentioned above, while drawing a blank everywhere else. But let us return to the CPM.

The Marxists, in alliance with other members of the Left Front or in solitary splendour, have three chief ministers — in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. In the thirteenth general election, the party polled 19,695,767 votes — that is nineteen million, six hundred and ninety-five thousand, seven hundred and sixty-seven people voted for it. I think that is six times the total electorate of Sikkim, Nagaland, Mizoram, and Manipur put together! The Marxists won 5.40 per cent of all the votes polled in the last General Election, meaning roughly one voter of every 20 opted for the CPM.

I realise, of course, that most of this strength comes from West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, rather than being spread across India. But it is absurd to claim that the voters of these states somehow count for less than those of other states, and the Marxists must therefore be denied the status of a national party. I am sorry, but this is just plain silly.

In the past, the Election Commission was kind enough to interpret the rules to suit certain parties. Thus it was that Subramaniam Swamy’s Janata Party continued to be counted as a national party for several years. Frankly, I am not sure if this one-man outfit rated a description as a ‘party’, national or otherwise! I know Dr Gill and his colleagues are not bound by the past. Let us also acknowledge they have done yeoman work in trying to make elections fairer. But it is precisely because they are seen as reformers that I am astounded to find the Election Commission making an issue of the CPM.

It is for Nirvachan Sadan to rule but here is my suggestion: take a leaf out of the Election Commission’s own rule book. If a candidate does not win at least one-sixth of the valid votes polled in a constituency, he or she loses the deposit. Is there any reason why this should not apply to parties too? I do not necessarily mean using the same figure of one-sixth. (Only the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress would qualify!) But take some suitable figure and then stick to it, that is if a party gets ‘x’ per cent of the total votes polled in India, it automatically qualifies as a ‘national’ party.

Yes, I know it is not a perfect system since a party might win votes but not a single seat. But it is better than saying a party with three chief ministers and 33 Lok Sabha members is not a ‘national’ party!

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