Electoral Reforms... A long way to go

                                                         

Electoral reforms.... A long way to go 

Fair, transparent and just elections are soul of democracy but       criminalization deteriorate the very idea of democracy. Since          last two decade people's faith in election and democracy is          reducing consistently which is a further blow on democracy. to      correct this situation changes in election process in the form of      electoral reforms is inevitable. some important electoral reforms    include; use of EVM, Universal Adult Franchise initiated by      61st Amendment, 1988 which has reduced the age of voters        from 21 years to 18 years and Anti- Defection Law which            curtails the criminals from taking tickets of various political             parties. despite these reforms criminalization of politics did not      reduce even marginally. Recent two SC ruling again started the debate for need of more vigorous electoral reforms. In one ruling SC banned those politician, who are convicted for more than 2 year by any court of law, from contesting election as well as forfeiture of membership of legislative assembly and parliament. In second ruling SC ordered election commission to include ' none of the above' option in EVM or ballet paper. Both of the ruling likely to affect the upcoming election result.
                       While one will help to give the country a good,clean, corruption free and transparent governance second will give the voter greater flexiblity and freedom for the expression. Among two landmark judgement second judgment; inclusion of 'NOTA' option has far reaching consequences. it is a vote expressing disapproval which can be either against leadership, policies or both.On one hand  it will build more pressure on political parties to put up clean and corruption free candidate on the second hand foster greater participation among voters.
These two ruling are welcome step but one has to keep in mind that criminalization of politics is to a large extent a function of massive and continuing socio-economic inequalities and uneven power relation. Bridging these gap through political institutional efforts would play in curbing criminalization.
as far as participation in election is concerned it is linked to a whole lot of factors like complicated registration process, votes apathy, income disparities, increasing spatial mobilization, loss of a day's wages and social turmoil. Reforms in these factor directly or indirectly related with deterioration in quality of politics. once the developmental politics will take place these factors will subsides gradually.