The Spectator: Two is competition, Three is crowd, More is a mess???

The Spectator: Two is competition, Three is crowd, More is a mess???

Two is competition, Three is crowd, More is a mess???

Koppala constituency by-poll election result in Karnataka is out and it is yet another win for ‘Operation Kamala’ campaign.

Koppal by-poll results
Party	Candidate	Votes
BJP	Karadi Sanganna	60,405
Congress	K Basavaraj Hitnal	47,917
JD(S)	Pradeep Gowda Malipatil	20,719
Others	---------------------------------	55,959
Total number of votes: 1,85,000

It is evident that the BJP has a healthy win margin of 12488 votes. But lets look it in a different way.How many people in Koppal constituency accept the winner as their political leader or how many people think that he can represent them in Karnataka assembly?

The answer is only 60,000 people out of 1,85,00 who has voted in this by-election.

Other 1,25,000 (more than double who accept) think either he is not suitable for the job or they think some other person is more suited for this job. This calculation is true for the congress or any other candidates as well, that more people ‘dislike’ him for the job than the people ‘like’ him for the job.

Koppal is just an example here, This is likely scenario in almost all election results.

Now that brings the ‘good old’ discussion of having limit on number of candidates or number parties in our democracy.

In our democracy we have accepted that any number of eligible parties or any number of eligible candidates can contest in an election. Yes, that is the beauty of democracy that it allows diversified view points to come in every matter. Not only in election in other govt. function as well like policy making etc. (Even in judiciary, we are seeing lot of split verdicts from judges on a particular case).

But for electoral system, this flexibility of pitching in any number of candidates simply diverse the core intention which is electing a able leader.

It is not a secret that political parties give tickets to candidates based on the major caste in that constituency. That means criterion for candidature is not the quality of the person but his caste. Our electoral process is not intended to elect religious leader. We have so many other places for that. Electoral system is for electing a candidate who can represent most people in his constituency.

It is good that politicians now can not simply switch parties after they are elected by people. Like this rule, I just wish a new rule will be introduced to restrict number candidates for particular constituency election. When you have more candidates, people tends to divert their opinion (vote).

I feel, Limit of 2 or Maximum 3 candidates per constituency with O Form (option of rejecting all candidates) will allow able candidates to get ticket from the parties. I am not saying number political parties must be restricted to 2 or 3. Political parties can have allies like NDA, UPA etc to support their candidates. But number of allies and hence number of candidates should be restricted. It may put pressure on independent candidates to get support for political allies but if one person is an able and widely acceptable candidate, He will not have problems in getting support.

We as Indians are at our best when we are lead by a strong and mostly accepted leader. This may be true for people from other nations as well, but it is absolute necessity in our case because we have more points (based on caste, language, region etc) for de-linking yourself from your leader or from your team.

So when you have only 2 or 3 candidates, it will force political allies to search for the person who is more acceptable and has strong leadership capabilities. When you have capable candidates contesting election, it brings out the best.

And also I think it will encourage more people to participate in voting, especially the educated and urban class who do not vote due to lack of belief in this political system.