As India nears 1 bn electors, it seeks solutions to freebies, black money

By the end of this month, India is set to have 990 million electors — people enrolled in the electoral roll — and on the cusp of reaching the “landmark” of 1 billion electors soon, according to Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar. Speaking on Tuesday, Kumar pointed to the ever improving gender ratio of electoral rolls, and said there were 480 million women electors in the country today. 

The 18 Lok Sabha and nearly 435 Assembly polls, including that of states no longer in existence, that the Election Commission has conducted since 1951-52 tell a story of an electoral system that has tried to be inclusionary. For example, the proportion of the total electors to the proportion of the total population has increased manifold, as has the gender ratio and turnout of women. 

In the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the percentage turnout of women electors was better than men. In 2019, in as many as 23 of the 36 states and Union Territories (UTs), the turnout of women was better than men. In 2024, of the 28 major states and UTs, the turnout of women was better than men in 15. The 2024 LS polls witnessed the least number of re-polling. 

Kumar, who retires next month, termed the records and seamless conduct of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls as “gold standard”. But he also flagged the challenges Indian democracy faces, calling for finding “accepted and legal answers” for political parties announcing “freebies” during poll campaigns. 

The CEC appeared to back the proposal to allow ‘remote voting’ to ensure that India’s 300 million “missing voters” get the opportunity to exercise their ballot, given that the voter turnout was 65-67 per cent in the two Lok Sabha polls. He urged political parties to conduct less vituperative and aggressive campaigning because they turn the youth away from the electoral process. 

Kumar spoke of the record seizures of cash, alcohol, psychotropic substances, and other inducements meant for electors by the authorities during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, which the Commission estimated to be in excess of Rs 9,000 crore, an all-time record. But the CEC did not specifically flag another concern — the increasing role of unaccounted money during elections. 

 

The symbolism of Vellore

  In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, on an Election Commission (EC) plea, the President rescinded polling to Tamil Nadu’s Vellore constituency after a poll panel team seized Rs 11.5 crore in cash meant for distribution among voters. It was a rare instance of an election to a Lok Sabha seat countermanded over allegations of distribution of cash.  

Two months later, when the polling took place for the Vellore seat, officials seized Rs 3.5 crore in cash, but on that occasion the EC refrained from recommending that the voting be postponed. 

The cancellation of the Vellore polling in April 2019, symbolic as it was, did not reduce the role of unaccounted money and inducements. Estimates of election related expenditure of political parties and candidates, and EC’s seizures, reveal barely the tip of the total election spends of candidates and political parties. According to a study by the Centre for Media Studies (CMS), a think tank, more than Rs 1.5 trillion was spent across various elections held in India from 2009 to 2014. It termed it a “conservative estimate”, and said more than half of this was unaccounted for, or black money. 

According to the report, ‘Poll Expenditure, the 2019 Elections’, the CMS estimated that Rs 55,000-60,000 crore were spent on the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. It could not account for all the expenditure of political parties and candidates. 

“On an average, nearly Rs 100 crore per Lok Sabha constituency has been spent. Overall, it is estimated about Rs 700 per vote was spent in the 2019 elections,” the report noted. Of the total figure, only Rs 10,000-12,000 crore, or 15-20 per cent, were spent by the EC or through formal channels. 

For the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the CMS estimated that a total of Rs 1.35 trillion was spent. With the size of the total electorate of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls at almost 966 million, at the time of the CMS assessment, the spend per elector was Rs 1,400. 

In contrast, the total election expenditure for the 1998 LS polls was Rs 9,000 crore. It increased to Rs 10,000 crore in 1999, Rs 14,000 crore in 2004, Rs 20,000 crore in 2009, and Rs 30,000 crore in 2014, the CMS estimated. It stated that of these expenditures, the EC spent less than 15 per cent in conducting the polls. 

 

Limit no bar

  The ‘high level committee’ on simultaneous polls, in its report submitted in March 2024, relied on an analysis by economists Prachi Mishra and NK Singh that an estimated Rs 4 trillion to Rs 7 trillion were spent on elections in the preceding five years. The committee said it based its data on “publicly reported estimates of conducting elections”. 

In 2009, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) analysed accounts of expenditure submitted by all 6,753 candidates who contested the LS polls that year. Of these, only four candidates admitted to spending more than the EC mandated limit for expenditure. Another 30 admitted to having spent 90 to 95 per cent of the limit. 

The remaining 6,719 candidates said they spent at best 45 to 50 per cent of the limit, says ADR founder Jagdeep Chhokar. “So, an astounding 99.99 per cent (recurring) of the candidates said they spent barely 50 per cent of the expense limit,” he says. 

Chhokar adds that if India is moving towards a cashless economy, why can’t political parties receive funds and make payments digitally. “Where is the need for cash transactions and why should political parties be receiving funds below a certain threshold, such as Rs 20,000 or  Rs 2,000, in cash?” 

 

Simultaneous polls

  In their analysis titled, ‘Macroeconomic Impact and Harmonising Electoral Cycles’, which is part of the Kovind panel report, Singh and Mishra suggested that simultaneous polls could be the panacea for some of the ills. They stated that periods of synchronised elections in the past contributed to relatively higher economic growth, lower inflation, higher public spending and investments, and improved quality of expenditure following periods of synchronised elections, as compared to those that were not synchronised. 

“Overall, for India to transition into an advanced economy (Viksit Bharat by 2047), political economy and electoral cycles will be crucial, like any other country,” the report said. It argued that synchronised polls could add approximately 1.5 percentage points in real national growth (Rs 4.5 trillion in FY24) during simultaneous elections as compared to non-simultaneous elections. 

Their paper said it could lead to 1.1 per cent fall in consumer price index-based inflation, healthier fiscal deficit as propensity to promise freebies would reduce, higher public spending skewed towards capital expenditure, and higher overall investment. They also argued that fewer days of the model code of conduct being in force would lead to more efficient governance and fewer delays in implanting projects. 

However, Opposition parties have contested these claims. The proposed 129th Constitution Amendment Bill, which the government introduced in the Lok Sabha in the Winter Session, is now with a 39-member joint committee of Parliament for further scrutiny. 

At the committee’s first meeting on Wednesday, Opposition members criticised the concept of simultaneous polls as an attack on the basic fabric of the Constitution and federalism, following a presentation by the Ministry of Law and Justice on the provisions of the Bills and the rationale guiding them. A number of Opposition MPs, including Congress' Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, questioned the claim that simultaneous polls will reduce expenditure. 

Given that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance lacks the numbers to push the Constitution Amendment through in its current form, political parties outside and within Parliament would do well to rectify some of the other ills plaguing India’s electoral system which the outgoing CEC flagged in his final press conference.