A SEBI for Election Manifestoes

Elections fought between the principal alliances, INDI and NDA, during 2024 were one of the longest, tiresome, irritable and beyond the endurance of the common man. The saga of elections, opinion polls, debates between party spokespersons, exit polls, opinions and discussions among citizens was exacerbated by the vitriol and venom spewed by politicians of all hues.

It was also, probably the first time when misinformation, fake allegations, false narratives aided by deep fake videos and a plethora of impractical and flimsy promises were made to a gullible electorate on a grand scale, albeit by candidates and parties of questionable credibility.

A Dire Need for a Draft Manifesto

This leaves a common citizen wondering whether it is time the entire process of holding elections from the announcement of election schedule, selection of candidates by parties, filing of nominations, holding of rallies, formulating party manifesto, political discourses by parties, press & analysts and political observers, opinion polls, exit polls et al are strictly regulated by a statutory authority with wider and sky high powers than the Central Election Commission (ECI)

Among the various facets of an election mentioned above, the party election manifesto is deemed to be one of the most important documents prepared, circulated and discussed by serious parties contending to fight the elections, especially on a National scale in order to disseminate information on what the party promises to deliver if elected to power.

The party manifesto is nothing short of a Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP) that is filed by a company with SEBI in order to make a complete disclosure of the organization, its promoters, business and business plans, end-use of proceeds of equity, of the company before it can launch a public offer for sale of shares to prospective investors.

In the same vein, why can't the ECI aided by an economic, legal and financial wing, make it mandatory for all parties to file their Draft Manifesto (DM) with the ECI so as to enable them to go through a rigorous process of vetting the document by ensuring that a thorough due diligence is carried out on the written promises made in the DM. The DM can be set to a standard format as is being made for a DRHP. 

Composition of the DM

The DM may mandatorily contain, inter alia,

1) Name of the party, its registered office, past & present office bearers of the party, 

2) Material Record of elections contested in the past with results in a prescribed format.

3) Candidates listed to contest the current elections, constituency-wise

4) Background of the candidates, viz age, gender, religion/caste, educational qualifications, experience in business/industry/employment/profession/politics, existence of legal cases/disputes for and against each, Net worth and any other material information/data that could influence the decision of the voter.

5) Core Objectives of the party

6) Ancillary Objectives

7) Other Objectives

8) Elaboration of point (5) in quantitative and qualitative terms with utmost clarity on "Sources and Application" of funds to support the objectives, where financial implications are inevitable. (No conditions applicable, except force majeure)

9) Point (8) certification by a CA/CFA/Management Accountant (who needs to stick his/her neck out in case clarifications, if any, is raised by the ECI.

10) A tentative Implementation Schedule of objectives listed under (5), (6) & (8)

11) An Earnest Money Deposit (EMD) at a nominal percentage of aggregate of "Application of funds" under point (8) (Apart from Election Deposit for each candidate)

12) Risk factors as declared by the party and as advised/perceived by the ECI.

13) Party's perception of the risk factors

14) List of Material documents/certificates/approvals etc

15) List of places/locations/joints where the manifesto is made available in detailed format/abridged format.

16) Party's website uploaded with the complete DM in a downloadable format.

17) A list of PROs with their email IDs, landlines and mobile numbers who can be contacted by voters for clarifications, if any.

18) Name & address and contact coordinates of the Chief Election Coordinator of the party.

Timelines and Review Mechanism

The DM would ideally need to be filed and approved by the ECI at least 30 days before the commencement of elections. Any party leader making any promise beyond the scope of the party's DM will need to be dealt with with punitive action by the ECI, either by suspension of his/her candidature and/or imposing a monetary penalty on the speaker. An abridged version of the DM would be required to be published in a National newspaper of repute.

The party forming the Govt will need to file its performance report card every 6 months with the ECI in the prescribed format, as also advertise the report card in a National newspaper at the cost of the exchequer and upload the same on a website mandated by the ECI.

To Conclude

While the measures detailed above may not be comprehensive and could also suffer from some limitations, I think they lend a more credible process that the electorate can rely on for making a vital decision of their choice in the best interests of a vibrant democracy.

What next after DEMONitization?

Weeding out black money in the form of high-denom currencies is passe. It remains to be seen whether the estimated Rs 4 lakh Crore worth of scrap paper gets jettisoned from the monetary system and if so, what would the Govt really do with this huge surplus. (The value of old notes not returned to the banking system before the set deadline would result in reduction of RBI's liability to the Govt to that extent, resulting in flow of that much funds to the Govt from RBI by way of dividend, reduction in Govt Securities or by whatever name called)

What Next? A hint of PM's speech in Goa on 13th Nov  2016 was a clear pointer to the malaise of Benami properties. This set me thinking of what could be effective and fool proof measures that could be adopted in order to root out this evil once for all.

If I were part of the economic think-tank in the echelons of power, I would have suggested the following measures. These would from crux of the announcements that would be made on 1st January 2017.

1. There will be a holiday period of 90 days commencing from 1st January 2017 upto 31st March 2017 for all property related registrations across all SROs (Sub Registrar Offices) spread across the country covering all states and UTs. In other words, no sale or purchase or POA of properties will be entertained during the aforesaid period of 90 days.

2. All property owners, possessing any single property valued at more than Rs 50 lakhs (Purchase Price or FMV whichever is higher) will have to submit a declaration in triplicate, containing (inter alia) the following information in a Form prescribed for the purpose:

a) Name and address of the Owner of the Property.
b) PAN No. of the Owner
c) Nature of Property (Flat/Commercial Bldg/Residential Bldg/Wetland/Dryland/Farmland)
d) Address of property with Pin Code
e) Date of Purchase/Inheritance/Settlement of property.
f) Name and Last known Address of Seller/Bequether/Settlor.
g) Purchase price and Current Fair Market Value (FMV) of the property in case of purchase
h) FMV (Govt guideline value) of property in case of inheritance/settlement.
i) Income Tax Assessment Circle/Range, in case the owner is an Assessee

Those owning property valued at less than or equal to Rs 50 lakhs (FMV) need not submit this declaration.

The above Form will be required to be submitted in triplicate to the BANK where the owner has his/her SB/Current account. The Bank will retain one copy and acknowledge by endorsing on the other two copies, both of which will be returned to the Owner.

The Owner will have to submit one of the endorsed copy of the Form to the SRO within whose ambit the said property falls under, and obtain yet another acknowledgement from the SRO on the third copy of the declaration, which he needs to keep for his/her records.

3. Such of those properties in respect of which no declaration would have been made before 31st March 2017 (the deadline) will be specifically and temporarily marked by the Govt authorities for mandatory acquisition by the Central Govt.

Note on internal procedures to be adopted by the Govt/Agencies:

1. The Bank will submit a scanned copy of the Form along with digital history of ALL available transactions (in soft copy mode) of the account holder to the Income Tax Department (Specific Circle/Range) for further scrutiny, tax re-assessment if any and final clearance.

2. With the passage of Benami Transaction (Prohibition) (Amendment) Act 2015, which has come into force effective 1st November 2016, the law and punitive measures have been made very stringent and rather "Draconian". (The initial law passed in 1988 lacked teeth). Benamidaar (holder of the benami property) will need to fork out 10% of the FMV as fine with 5 years imprisonment if found guilty of non-disclosure. Of course the property gets confiscated by Govt, in any case. The beneficial owner (the person who has paid for the property) if ascertained from Benamidaar will have to fork out 25% of the FMV as fine AND imprisoned for 7 years and will have to undergo RI - Mandatorily.

3. Considering point 2 above, it is most likely than neither Benamidaar or the beneficial owners would come forward to make the declaration as prescribed above, in which case the property will be confiscated by the Govt.

4. An extended period of another 3 or 6 months would be extended for submitting the Declaration to such of those persons who would have been unable to do so within 31st March 2017 on account of stay in foreign soil/sickness etc. But such declarations will have to be made by the owner DIRECTLY to the income tax authority where he/she is assessed or liable to be assessed along with bank transaction history (obtainable from the bank) and a copy of declaration needs to be submitted to the concerned SRO.

Many Questions could arise about the effectiveness of implementation of the above said measures. Here we need to understand that:

a) 85% of land/property records have been computerized and available in digital mode. This is expected to be completed by mid-December 2016.

b) This would make it easy for the Govt to build and possess a central repository of all property data in classified manner of all propertied assets across the country.

c) Marking of properties as "Genuine" in respect of which Declarations have been received will be easy.

d) By the process of elimination of Genuine properties and such of those valued below threshold limit, the authorities can zero in on all LIKELY benami properties.

e) After the final deadline for concessional declarations (say 30th Sep 2017), the authorities will zero in on all unmarked digital property documents and make a list of all such properties in a classified manner.

f) Govt will finally take over (and develop) all such properties which are suitable/useful and beneficial for social schemes such as PHC/CGHS/Cummunity Halls/Bus Terminus/Rly Stn expansion etc which the Govt would have otherwise done as part of acquisition for Socially relevant schemes (Under Sec 6 of erstwhile Land Acquisition Act). This is where, the surplus from Demonitization could be utilized -is my thinking.

g) Such of those deemed Benami properties which is not required by the Govt will be publicly auctioned. This will fetch a huge revenue to the Govt. This revenue can also be utilized for the purposes stated in (f) above.

h) For such of those who dream of obtaining a stay order from the Courts in India against the above proceedings, I would like to remind them that our Constitution does not guarantee "Right to Property". Even if one has purchased property with hard earned money after paying taxed legitimately, the Govt has the right to take over such property in the interest of general social good, leave alone the right of the State to confiscate Benaami property.

i) Though "Land" is a State subject, Entry No 42 of List III of the Constitution empowers Central Govt in the matter of "Acquisition and Requisitioning of Property" under the Concurrent List.

An Energizing Reclusion

What does it take one to look half his/her age?

Venturing out for info on this mission, you are sure to stumble upon endless tips on do's and dont's, some of them already in your "regimen", (if there is one), some quite doable or undoable and a plethora of them you would like to do or undo but wouldn't have the heart or mind to keep to the dictum.

Broadly classifying the dicta, what is more primary and warranted than the other, are the a) efforts to bring down the biological age of the innate physical body and the other less important, the b) efforts to pursue all those steps to look young. Now I have decided to embark on a mission to achieve the former as a sine qua non for fulfilling the latter!

I would say that my experiences during my marathon treks were a primary motivating factor to take the bitter pills to tone down. Defying Newton's laws, I always perceived my own terrestrial acceleration due to gravity at 20 rather than at 9.8! Many a times, during my solitary treks, I do resort to the perfunctory collapse on my own volition at the penultimate moment in order to pre-empt a most inevitable swoon in the wilderness. Sometime back last winter, my 15 km trek across hill ranges in Yelagiri (about 250 km from my suburban farm midway to the cosmopolitan outsourcing hub) ended in the inevitable collapse just in time on thrusting myself under a waterfall, the destined target of the trek. The physical self was unable to keep pace with the mind's endurance. If the mind is unable to pull the bodily burden, either the former is fragile or the latter is! In my case the physical body considered itself too superior to be at the service of the mind! Mind has been at the service of the intellect at least for the past few years, though!

At just 5 short of hitting that horrendous century, I decided that it's time that I subjected myself to a "Rigorous Imprisonment" from all things nice and beautiful that life has to offer!!!

After sifting through good lot of literature on the caption, I conveniently salvaged the following ten commandments - suiting my lifestyle ....without rocking the comfort boat

1. Ensure 50% Veggies content in any meal. (Customized Orders!)
2. Tea with milk is vestigeal. Consume only pure black.(Bitter Better)
3. Neem and Thulsi leaves (in lieu of biscuits at tea)
4. Drink 5 litres of water a day. Thats 1 for every 20 kg.(If you cant carry a loo, make sure there's one near you)
5. Take green tea twice a day. (ok thats a med)
6. One hour of rigorous equipment exercise every morning.....the most difficult part!
7. Breathing exercise at traffic signals..instead of raving and ranting at rogue drivers!
8. Use coconut oil for cooking. Go the Bong/Mallu way!
9. Sleep 8 hours a day...fortify your bedroom and ...de-clutter it!
10. Park car at least 100 m from the destination.....a luxury in the concrete jungles!

And Now for the Ten sins to avoid-

1. No fried foods. No fast foods.....and the associated frills!
2. If you wanna binge, go brush and floss your teeth instead! Carry disposables!
3. No escalators. Need to reach destinations 15 to 20 min before time!
4. No aerated beverages...what with a pizza....oops no pizzas anyway!
5. Don't eat when thirsty. Know thirst from hunger. Do we?
6. No food intake after 2 hours before sleep. Walk down and chat up with the grocer if sleep interrupts!
7. No ice creams. What's life without it! Lemme discover!
8. No Vehicle/errand boy for targets less than 500 meters. Neighbourhood is blinking!
9. No Porter. No Trolley bags! (Leaving the shores? Donna worry...forget all the commandments!)

10. Don’t worry, be happy. If a problem is in control, solve it. If not, abandon it!

So it is with these charters, I commenced on a perceptibly difficult journey on the tenth day of Ashvina (Vijaydashami for the uninitiated)

Current "Asset" 95 Targeted Erosion at about 20%- down to 75. An uphill task!

It has been a week since the initiation.

Symptoms and Effects:- Car boot laden with crates of mineral water, …and some uncooked edible veggies too. 3 kgs burnt on the exercising equipment along with a commercial burn of 15k. Milk vendor is unhappy. Friends/associates ask me if I have become diabetic…and tender free advice on how to counter the problem! Primates wandering on my terrace wondering what this animal is upto every morning, trying in vain to break metallic rods every other day! My O’Boy unhappy with lost opportunities…going ‘untipped’! Vehicles at traffic signals wondering if this guy is suddenly suffering from a lucid interval of amnesia! Hating the car, using the public transport a lot more! The neighboring grocer with his new found bonhomie, looking for loan favours! The ice cream vendor claiming nonchalantly…’I told you so!’…and many more comical situations that cannot be scripted…! Anyways...I asked for it...So be it....if the targets are within calling distance of the mind!

In any case, I have desperately latched on to the dicta with vice like grip until the erosion is complete!