Poll reforms:Madhav pitches for 'Election Commission Cadre'

BJP general secretary Ram Madhav on Friday suggested forming an 'Election Commission cadre', as part of electoral reforms, to take care of the activity of the poll panel independent of any political interference.

"I feel that Election Commission has an important role. I feel that it should have its own cadre. An Election Commission cadre should develop...," he said.

"It can be a limited cadre but which takes care of the entire activity of the Election Commission, independent of any political interference...probably, it is time we have a separate cadre for them," he said.

Madhav was speaking at a conference here on 'Indian Democracy at Work- Money Power in Politics'.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's efforts towards 'onenation and one election' would be an important milestone in the reforms process, he said.

All political parties have to come together and discuss the modalities on how to do it, he said.

For the purpose of 'one nationone election', the practice of tabling no-confidence motion should be done away with and there should only be a confidence motion, Madhav said.

He referred to ideas like shifting to a presidential system (of government) or proportional representation and said there are faults and positive sides in every system.

But, pending any such shift, delimitation of constituencies, in which the number of constituencies goes up (reducing the present size of constituencies), should be undertaken, he said, adding this would lead to reduction in powers concentrated in the hands of legislators at present.

Former President Pranab Mukherjee suggested increasing the number of Lok Sabha constituencies to 1,000, Madhav said.

"A rational way of reorganizing the constituencies has to happen. So that this superman image of our legislators has to change. They have to be more accountable," he said.

Stating that political parties allocate "separate budget" for the last two days of election, an amount much more than what is allocated for the preceding days, he stressed that this practice should be "crushed."