NEW DELHI, 21 October 2003 — If Indians vote for “better people” instead of criminals, the country’s election system and Parliament will improve, Chief Election Commissioner J.M. Lyngdoh has said.

With elections to five state assemblies around the corner and parliamentary elections due next year, Lyngdoh is spelling out guidelines for voters and politicians alike.

A recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, Asia’s version of the Nobel Prize, Lyngdoh is busy ensuring free and fair elections in India. He received the award this year for “his convincing validation of free and fair elections as the foundation and best hope of secular democracy in India.”

Stressing the need for people to exercise their right to vote wisely, Lyngdoh said: “ Essentially, the elections have to improve. And the elections will improve only if citizens are alert. Citizens insist that they get better people. Citizens insist that they do not get criminals, the criminals they are getting today.”

“Earlier, the Parliament consisted mostly of professional people like doctors, engineers and others who returned to their professions after finishing” their parliamentary term, he said. “That is how it should be. But nowadays you are getting a whole lot of people who do not have a job. I mean that is their only job, the political one,” he said.

The Election Commission is formulating “tougher guidelines” to deter “overspending” candidates in the upcoming assembly elections.

“We are working on it and the guidelines will be ready this week,” commission sources said.

Strict limits for candidates’ expenditure are being set for the first time, the sources said.

Assembly elections in Mizoram and by-elections in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh will take place on Nov. 20, while four other states — Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan — go to the polls on Dec. 1.

Despite the electoral laws providing a maximum limit of 600,000 rupees on each candidate contesting the assembly election, candidates often spend much more. But with the new commission regulations, all candidates need to declare their assets and submit a statement of expenditure incurred during the campaign.

The announcement comes after the Supreme Court, noting what it called a “criminalization of politics,” said parties spent in excess of 10 billion rupees on elections. “Nobody discloses the source of the money,” the court said recently.

A commission directive recently refuted a claim from Information and Broadcasting Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. Prasad had argued that government advertisements commemorating four years of its rule, which went on show after the elections were announced, in no way violated the commission’s code. He said they had no bearing on the regional elections since they only talked about the achievements of the federal government. But the Election Commission wrote to the Cabinet secretary and the information minister, stating: “With the announcement of elections on Oct. 6, the model code of conduct came into force immediately. (Thus ) the display of such advertisements at the cost of the public exchequer constitutes a clear violation of the code.”