Electoral Reforms
Important Recommendations by Election Commission:-
- Independent Secretariat for the Commission
- Budget of the Commission to be ‘charged’ as in the case of the Budget of Comptroller and Auditor General of India and the Union Public Service Commission
- Amendment of law to restore cycle of biennial retirement in Rajya Sabha and Legislative Councils- The Constitutional provisions envisage that 1/3rd of the members of Rajya Sabha and Legislative Councils shall retire after every two years. However, in some states, the biennial retirement cycle has broken with the result that in some states all the members retire at the same time.
- Amendment to Rules to provide for use of Totalizer for counting of votes – As per the present rules, votes in the EVMs are to be counted polling station wise, which leads to situations where voting pattern in various localities/pockets become known to everyone. There is a view that this can result in victimization and/or discrimination and intimidation of electors of particular localities. To address this issue, at the instance of the Commission, the manufacturing firms of EVMs have developed a device called “Totalizer” which can be used for taking out the results of voting in a group of 14 EVMs without revealing the votes in individual EVMs. For using Totalizer for counting, the rules need to be amended.
- Multiple qualifying dates for enrolment in electoral roll – As per the existing provisions of the Law, only a person who completes 18 years of age as on 1st January of the year is eligible to be enrolled in the electoral roll for that year. A person turning 18 after 1st January has to wait till the next year for getting enrolled. The Commission proposed that instead of only one qualifying date for enrolment, there should be 4 different dates (1st January, 1st April, 1st July and 1st October) for enrolment so that maximum number of people can be enrolled.
- Constitutional protection for all members of the Commission and independent Secretariat for the Commission – In 1998, the Commission had proposed that the Constitutional protection provided to the Chief Election Commissioner should be provided to the Election Commissioners also as the protection envisaged is for the Institution and not for individuals. The Commission has reiterated the proposal on subsequent occasions.
- Electoral Trust :– Under the present law electoral trusts can possible raise funds from foreign sources because they are not expressly prohibited under law. ECI has recommended to the Finance and Law Ministries to make specific law prohibiting electoral trusts accepting funds from foreign sources so that they can not able to transfer the funds to the political parties.
Recent Posts
Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.