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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.
