Open ballot for RS elections mooted

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, OCT. 29. The Cabinet today approved changes in the laws governing elections to the Rajya Sabha. It has suggested that voting be through an open ballot (as against secret voting at present) and that the candidate need not be ``ordinarily resident'' in the State he or she seeks to represent.

The rationale behind the proposal to introduce open ballot was to curb the ``use of money resulting in cross-voting'' in the elections to the Council of States, the Union Law Minister, Mr. Arun Jaitley, told correspondents after a meeting of the Cabinet.

He said the Government proposed to amend Sections 59 and 128 of the Representation of the People Act (RPA) which would do away with the current provision of a secret ballot in the biennial elections.

The second proposal cleared by the Cabinet pertains to amending Section 3 of the RPA which now states that the candidate should be ordinarily resident of the State in which he or she was seeking election. This would be replaced by ``resident anywhere in the country''.

A Bill to this effect will be brought before Parliament in the winter session.

Referring to the proposed amendment of switching over to open ballot, Mr. Jaitley said that at a meeting held by the Election Commission last year, several political parties including the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Samajwadi Party, the Telugu Desam and the Shiv Sena had spoken on the need to curb cross-voting in Rajya Sabha elections.

The suggested change to enable a candidate to be a voter in any State and not necessarily a resident of the State is expected to find broad support across major political parties. In fact, senior leaders have been accommodated in the Rajya Sabha by parties and brought in from any State where they have enough strength in Assemblies.

Political parties had argued that the residency rule for a candidate for the Rajya Sabha was at variance with the one for the Lok Sabha where any Indian could contest from any constituency in the country.

The residency rule for the Rajya Sabha became controversial when the Election Commission began scanning the elections of some MPs and asking them inconvenient questions about their residency. This forced many to maintain homes in the States they represented. The election of the Congress leader, Dr. Manmohan Singh, to the Rajya Sabha from Assam became controversial and was finally cleared by the courts.

The other proposed change in favour of open voting is also likely to get the support of the Congress which has also suffered due to cross-voting.

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