EC officials met law secretary on electoral reforms issue: CEC

The Election Commission has pitched for electoral reforms ahead of Lok Sabha elections due this summer. CEC Sunil Arora said Thursday that EC officials recently met top Law Ministry officials on the issue.

Responding to a question on reforms during an event here, he said, "We (EC officials) had a meeting with the law secretary on reforms," adding, "they are trying to expedite it".

The reforms being pushed by the poll panel include making filing of false declaration a ground for disqualification of candidates and putting a cap on expenditure by them in legislative council polls.

While the Law Ministry is the administrative ministry for the EC, the Legislative Department is the nodal unit for issues related to the poll panel.

In its report on electoral reforms submitted in March 2015, the Law Commission had proposed extending constitutional protection to the two election commissioners. The EC had been pushing to extend constitutional protection to the election commissioners.

The event was the launch of book "The Great March of Democracy: Seven Decades of India's Elections", a compilation of essays by several scholars, authors and political leaders, and edited by former CEC S Y Quraishi.

The essays in the book cover a range of subjects, from the evolution of the Election Commission, to the story of the first electoral roll, from election laws, to the deepening of democratic institutions over the decades and the participation revolution ushered in by the Election Commission's untiring and targeted efforts at voter education.

Contemporary issues, such as influence of money and criminalisation in politics, have also been addressed, as have been the electoral reforms proposed by experts on these subjects.