LOK SABHA POLLS 2014
With the Election Commission (EC)
of India announcing the poll schedule of the 2014 General Elections (GE 2014)
today, the model code of conduct has come into force with the immediate effect.
The long list of EC’s do’s and dont’s, though, on a whole, fails to discipline
the politicians, has certain favourites prioritized on the lips of the election
commissioners whenever they enumerate the measures to make the elections free
and fair.
Major among them are controlling
the flow of money beyond the stipulated limit, disciplining the politicians on
their personal conduct against other politicians and disciplining the
politicians on making sky-high promises to the electorate.
And therefore, like always, the
Election Commission has reiterated the three cardinal points:
Politicians should not make unrealistic promises/unachievable claims.
Politicians should not target each other with unsubstantiated
allegations.
The contestants must follow the threshold of poll spending, adding
another clause this time to submit details of foreign accounts and assets.
Now, based on the flow of the
history and the precedents set, we all know what is going to happen (BJP-AAP
violent clash outside BJP’s Delhi office today is just a glimpse of it):
When it comes to making promises, Indian politicians are the unmatched
achievers who religiously follow the age-old saying of the sages that ‘impossible
is a word that doesn’t exist in the dictionary of achievers’.
- They ascetically believe that ‘achieving’ means ‘making promises to extort votes’ by making promises look as grand and fabulous as possible.
The war of words that has already reached to juicier levels is slated
to scale the deafening heights. The limits of acceptable parliamentary behavior
that were already made irrelevant years ago will get even more humiliating
treatment.
- The dictionary of unparliamentarily/abusive/derogatory is scheduled to get more comprehensive and enriched by May 10, 2014 when the campaigning for the last phase of GE-2014 (on May 12) ends.
‘Who spends what’ and ‘who should
spend what’ – it has been an evergreen point of rift between the politicians
and the regulators, with politicians consistently outdoing the Election
Commission. And this foreign accounts and assets clause is not going to be of
any use as such accounts and assets are maintained to stash the black money
away from the regulatory clutches and identities are either kept secret or are
outsourced to others.
So, be ready for the final push of the political assault that began
with the five state assembly polls in the last quarter of 2013.
©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/
