The Madras High Court on Wednesday impressed upon the need for Election Commission of India (ECI) to keep a check on election funding.
It said that the commission should fix realistic limits of money that could be spent by individual candidates for the elections and also ensure that those limits were adhered to scrupulously.
Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy wrote: “It is common knowledge that contesting an election is an expensive proposition and the clandestine funding of elections is seen by many experts as the fundamental cause for the industry of corruption that is perceived to prevail in the country.”
They went on to state: “Though limits as to spending may be fixed by the Election Commission, such limits may not be realistic and it is the bounden duty of the constitutional watchdog to ensure that if limits are prescribed, they are adhered to; or realistic limits are set, and spending by candidates is confined to such limits, with a close scrutiny of the accounts being undertaken.”
The judges also stated that greater judicial notice might be necessary for electoral reforms and cleansing the system to rid it of the perceived largescale involvement of black money therein.
The court made the observations while disposing of a writ petition filed by B. Ramamoorthy of Vellore district seeking a direction to the ECI to initiate criminal prosecution against former Minister K.C. Veeramani of AIADMK for having allegedly submitted false information regarding his assets while contesting the Assembly election this year.
Since senior counsel G. Rajagopalan, representing the ECI, told the court that it would take a call on the issue after scrutinising the petitioner’s representation, the judges said the commission could devise a procedure for dealing with such representations and call for an explanation from the candidate concerned before taking a call on initiating prosecution.
