Need consensus for electoral reforms: Naidu

There is a need to bring in electoral reforms like holding simultaneous Lok Sabha and Assembly polls and taking measures to curb influence of money power, for which a consensus is required, Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said today.
"India has frequent election festivals. I call them festival because election becomes a festival, but we have too many festivals," he said.
The entire system then gets devoted to the electoral process because of which Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given a call for holding simultaneous elections for the Centre and the states, the Information and Broadcasting Minister said.
President Pranab Mukherjee has also endorsed it and Election Commission is also favourable to it, Naidu said.

"We need to reform the system... The country has to move in a direction and evolve a consensus," he said, adding the decision had to be taken in the interest of the country rising above party lines.
Another issue is to curb the influence of money power in the elections, Naidu said, adding Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has in the budget made a proposal that all political parties should accept contributions above Rs 2,000 by cheque.

The Union Minister was speaking at an event where he released - India Year Book 2017 published by the Publications Division which also launched an online digital Library today.

Lauding the initiatives, Naidu claimed that, "The previous regimes had only encouraged a particular kind of literature and not enough material is available to the people especially the younger generation about a lot of our heroes."
"It is sad that a lot of information about our great leaders, our forefathers who led the independence movement, who fought for the country against the Britishers like Veerapandiya Kattabomman, Tantya Tope and others, we don't have enough information for the new generation," he said.
He lauded the Publication Division for bringing information about lives of these heroes to the people, saying authentic information is very important.