Highly retrograde

THE UNION CABINET'S decision to initiate a statute change to dispense with the `domicile' qualification for election to the Rajya Sabha is a highly retrogressive one and, worse, it seeks to undermine its Constitution-endowed distinctive character, which its very name and the manner of its composition connote. The rationale for the Upper House reflecting the popular will as manifested in the various State legislatures has its roots in the federal type of governance the country has opted for. If the law, as it now stands, stipulates that the aspirant to a Rajya Sabha seat should be an elector registered in any parliamentary constituency of the State which he (or she) seeks to represent in the House - and this in turn means the person must `ordinarily' be a resident of that constituency - it is also because the Constitution-framers were convinced that those elected must have personal or political stakes in the State from which they are returned.

In spite of the special domiciliary requirement, political parties - particularly those who happened to be in power at the Centre - have had little compunction in making a mockery of it to serve their partisan interests by securing the election of rank `outsiders' to represent different States in the Upper House by virtue of their numbers in the legislatures concerned. This dubious practice, which necessarily required a blatantly untruthful declaration by the candidate about his (or her) status as `ordinarily resident', would perhaps have gone on as merrily as ever if it were not for the surge of assertiveness on the part of the Election Commission which decided, over five years ago, to take a hard look at the `facts' behind such declarations, the case of Dr. Manmohan Singh (who had got elected from Assam) serving as the focal point of contention.

The Vajpayee Government's decision to remove the `irritant' is a skewed and cynical response typical of the political class in general to situations where the laws are found to be troublesome or embarrassingly inconvenient. After all, the idea was being canvassed from the times of the Congress regime under Mr. P.V. Narasimha Rao. What is being attempted, by throwing open the Rajya Sabha membership from a State to a ``resident anywhere in the country'', is the obliteration of a vital and fine distinction between the two Houses of Parliament so thoughtfully conceptualised in the Constitution in keeping with its federal framework. Unfortunately, this distinction has become increasingly blurred, with the federal spirit that defined the role of the Upper House becoming progressively diffused. When the endeavour should be to reverse the process of erosion, the proposal to dispense with the special domiciliary requirement will only serve to hasten it. Rather, the remedy lies in honouring the spirit of the qualification, which has been prescribed with a definite purpose.

The other change decided upon by the Cabinet, which has to do with the method of balloting in the Rajya Sabha elections, however makes a lot of practical sense, given the worrying dimensions the canker of cross-voting has assumed in recent years, feeding itself on monetary inducements. Unlike the secret ballot, the open system now proposed will lend itself to more effective surveillance and identification of the black sheep by the party leaderships. This can be expected to have a deterrent effect, at least to a limited extent, on potential cross-voters who are willing to offer themselves as horses-in-trade. But the real question relates to the inadequacies of the party system, as for instance the predominance of opportunism, the near total absence of an ideological platform, the promotion of personality cults and a lack of inner-party democracy. As long as these basic problems are not addressed seriously, any change in law, however good in itself, can only be a palliative.

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