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Saturday, March 31, 2012

Using 49-O during voting - Power to the voter

In this post I would discus about the changes which are must during voting, Elections days, which would certainly help in electing best candidate or electing no candidate when there is no good candidate contesting ( This second case is currently not allowed in India), Choosing No candidate and choosing not to cast your vote can be a very powerful in eradicating corrupt candidates.

If a eligible voter doesnot want to cast his vote to any one of candidate (as candidates have criminal records, pending cases) then he can use article 49-0 for recording the fact that he doesnot want to cast his vote. However currently the whole process of using 49-O is cumbersome and not secret because if a voter chooses 49-O then he has to tell the presiding officer about this and thus secrecy of ballot is not followed in this approach which might become problem for the ballot as candidates come to know about people who have not casted votes, and we all know what any criminal can do.

The exact wording of article 49-O from constitution is as written below:

49-O. Elector deciding not to vote.-If an elector, after his electoral roll number has been duly entered in the register of voters in Form-17A and has put his signature or thumb impression thereon as required under sub-rule (1) of rule 49L, decided not to record his vote, a remark to this effect shall be made against the said entry in Form 17A by the presiding officer and the signature or thumb impression of the elector shall be obtained against such remark.

Current implementation of article 49-O violates the secret ballot. because the elegible voter has to tell to presiding officer about his intent of using 49-O thus it doesnot remain a secret anymore which husrts the basic of whole election process. But this can adher to secret ballot easily if our corrupt parliamentarians pass a bill for providing "none of the above" option along with candidate names in Electronic voting machines. Members of Civil society are demanding this bill and rightly so because if bill is passed so that when number of "none of the above" option is the highest for a particular constituency then all the candidates standing in elections for this constituency would never ever be eligible to stand in elections in future.

I think this approach would help in eradicating corrupt candidates from getting into the parliament and doing nothing for their quota of whole 5 years. If you have even better ideas for must have reforms in election process in India, do leave a comment for a healthy discussion.

Note - Please spread the word so that voters in India know about such articles and would help in choosing the right candidates for entering into parliament in future.

50 worst countries to live in - failed countries list

We all know that countries with single religion or with some official religion are the ones which are worst to live in. So in this post 50 worst countries to live are rated. Most of the countries are single religion and would eventually finish off one day.

50 worst countries list:
Country NameWorst Scale ranking
Somalia1
Chad2
Sudan3
Zimbabwe4
Congo5
Afghanistan6
Iraq7
Central African Republic8
Guinea9
Haiti10
Ivory Coast11
Kenya12
Nigeria13
Yemen14
Burma15
Ethiopia16
East Timor17
Niger18
North Korea19
Uganda20
Guinea-bissau21
Burundi22
Bangladesh23
Sri lanka24
Cameroon25
Nepal26
Malawi27
Sierra Leone28
Eritrea29
Republic of Congo30
Iran31
Liberia32
Lebanon33
Burkina Faso34
Uzbekistan35
Georgia36
Tajikistan37
Mauritania38
Cambidia39
Laos40
Rawada41
Solomon Islands42
Equatorial Guinea43
Kyrgystan44
Colombia45
Togo46
Syria47
Egypt48
Bhutan49
Philippines50