ECI’s Proposal To Law Ministry Is “One Person, One Seat”

Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar wrote a letter to the Law Ministry proposing to limit one person to contest only from one constituency at a time.

New Delhi:  Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar wrote a letter to the Law Ministry proposing to limit one person to contest only from one constituency at a time.

At present, one eligible person can contest elections from two different seats or constituencies. The move comes in the backdrop of the poll panel recently delisting 284 defaulting and non-compliant registered unrecognised political parties (RUPPs), declaring more than 253 of them.

As per statutory requirements under section 29A of the RP Act, every political party has to communicate any change in its name, head office, office bearers, address, and PAN to the Commission without delay.

Eighty-Six RUPPs were found to be non-existent either after a physical verification carried out by the respective Chief Electoral Officers of concerned states/UTs or based on the report of undelivered letters/notices from the Postal Authority sent to the registered address of the concerned RUPP.

This decision against 253 non-compliant RUPPs was taken based on reports received from Chief Electoral Officers of seven states namely Bihar, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh.

These 253 RUPPs were declared inactive, as they did not respond to the letter/notice delivered to them and have not contested a single election either to the General Assembly of a State or the Parliament Election 2014 and 2019. These RUPPs were failed to comply with statutory requirements for more than 16 compliance steps since 2015.

In his letter written to Union law Minister Kiren Rijiju in September, CEC also proposed to cap cash donation at 20 per cent or at Rs 20 crore whichever is lower, sources told Sources.

The sources on Saturday said that the Election Commission has proposed bringing down anonymous political donations from Rs 20,000 to Rs 2,000 to cleanse election funding of black money.

In the letter, CEC has recommended a slew of amendments to the Representation of the People (RP) Act.
According to the proposal, political parties are not required to report the cash received below Rs 2,000.

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As per rules in force currently, political parties have to disclose all donations above Rs 20,000 through their contribution report that is submitted to the ECI.

Earlier, the income tax department conducted raids in multiple states as part of a pan-India tax evasion probe against certain registered unrecognised political parties (RUPP) and their alleged dubious financial transactions.

The activities were taken by the department on a recent recommendation of the Election Commission which recently struck off at least 198 entities from its list of RUPP after they were found non-existent during physical verification.

The poll panel had announced that it was taking action against more than 2,100 entities, categorised as RUPP by it, for flouting rules and election laws, including those related to the filing of monetary contributions, failing to update their address and names of office bearers.

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