Know your candidate

People Like Them

Or maybe he's he sitting MLA's opponent, gearing up for electioneering? The elections are drawing close, you now," said she knowledgeably. The drumming faded, as did our speculations.

"How can you all make an informed choice while voting? You can't even recognise your candidate's face, let alone know whether he's qualified in any way to represent you in the Legislative Assembly!" exclaimed my friend Anjali, when she heard about this trivial incident.

Her frustration was especially acute because he's part of the Centre for Equity Studies, and they're currently trying to make available to public, worn affidavits of all the contestants of the coming elections in Delhi.

These affidavits include the candidate's educational qualifications, a list of is/her assets (both movable and immovable) and details of criminal records, if any. "I had no idea that the general public was privy to such information," I commented.

"In fact the Supreme Court has ruled that all contestants must furnish this information before the elections, and that this should be made available to voters on request. On the basis of this ruling, we got copies of the affidavits from divisional commissioners in each district," said she.

There are 70 constituencies in the capital, so collecting all this information has been no mean task. College students were roped in to volunteer, but a lot of their enthusiasm paled when they realised how slowly the wheels of bureaucracy move.

At times they had to wait as long as ten hours at a stretch "" and still got fewer affidavits than they expected. "We heard every excuse from 'the photocopier has become too hot' and 'there's no electricity' to 'it's not available yet'. But we stood our ground and managed to get all the affidavits of contestants fielded by the two major parties "" BJP and Congress "" eventually," said Anjali.

Some of the affidavits were interesting: an eminent politician in Delhi valued her 1,500 square yard property in a posh colony at a mere Rs 21 lakh. At least twenty eight candidates had civil or criminal cases pending against them, the honours shared equally by the Congress and BJP. Another aspirant conceded to having fifteen vehicles, but hastened to add that some were for 'business' use.

"We now intend to make seventy different pamphlets with information on the Congress and BJP candidates in each constituency, which we'll distribute through Residents Welfare Associations," said Anjali, adding, "since we don't know how much of a reach our pamphlets will have, we're also putting all this information in a tabular form on our website, www.righttoinformation.info."

Their student volunteers are also going to put up posters in public places. "The idea," said she earnestly, " is to empower as many people as we can, with information about different election candidates in their constituencies "" give them some idea of who they vote for."

The Supreme Court has also decreed that if any of the information furnished by candidates is later proven wrong, they can be removed from their position. "By forcing this transparency, we the people hope to pressurise political parties to field decent candidates," said she.

Amen to that, said I, and went off to figure out who that guy parading down my lane actually was.