People with 'heinous' cases against them should be debarred from elections: Ex-CEC

NEW DELHI: Former chief election commissioner S Y Quraishi on Wednesday suggested that people with "heinous" criminal cases against them should be debarred from fighting elections.

Quraishi, who was the CEC from 2010-12, said it was high time that long-pending electoral reforms were carried out in the country.

There were 40 pending proposals for electoral reforms, he said while speaking during a panel discussion at the launch of Congress leader and former Union minister M Veerappa Moily's book 'The Wheel of Justice'.

Quraishi, while talking about three such reforms, said criminalization of politics must be dealt with strongly.

He said there had been a proposal that people who had criminal cases pending against them should be debarred from fighting polls, but a concern that was raised was that there may be false cases and political cases.

"The answer is that only heinous cases such as rape, dacoity, murder and kidnapping which will lead to five year imprisonment and where a court of law has framed the charges (should be the benchmark for debarring a person)," he said

This was enough safeguard against political and motivated cases, he said, arguing that there were so many undertrials in jails with some of their fundamental rights taken away, then why couldn't the right to contest temporarily be taken away from those with criminal cases.

The second issue he raised was that of finance and corruption in polls. Quraishi suggested that state funding of political parties should be considered.

He also slammed the government's initiative of electoral bonds, saying it has made the process of funding of parties less transparent.

The third reform he raised was of the appointment of election commissioner.

"The most powerful commission in the world which the Election Commission of India is, has the most defective system of appointment," Quraishi said.