Answers to Questionnaire of Committee on Poll Expenses

Summary

A single-sheet typescript titled “Answers to Questionnaire of Committee on Poll Expenses”, replying point-by-point (items 1 through 14) to a government committee inquiry on how India’s elections should be financed and regulated. The respondent takes a consistently anti-regulatory line: no state subsidies to candidates or parties, no legal ceiling on election expenses, and no compulsion of voters. Several answers therefore collapse into the formulaic “Does not arise” once the underlying subsidy or ceiling premise is refused.

The positive proposals are narrow. The State may usefully print specified quantities of posters, leaflets, manifestoes and voter slips and supply them to candidates, provided the material is actually used for the stated purpose (point 5). Political parties should be legally compelled to maintain accounts open to public scrutiny and to hold regular internal elections — not as a quid pro quo for any subsidy, but as an ordinary requirement of democratic hygiene (point 8). If any concession is made to candidates it should go direct to the candidate with adequate accountability (point 6).

The recurring argument against expenditure ceilings is empirical and moral at once: ceilings only produce dishonest returns (point 9), and “he who wants to cheat will always be one step ahead of the law” (point 10), so laws observed only in their violation are worse than useless. On free voter transport (point 13), the respondent notes the paradox that compulsion to vote could itself become the pretext for candidates to buy the vote by providing conveyance — an inducement no formal ban will suppress.

Key points

• Point-by-point reply to a Committee on Poll Expenses questionnaire; 14 numbered answers on one typescript page.
• Opposes state subsidies to candidates or parties (point 3), so that surety, accountability and disbursement questions built on the subsidy premise “do not arise”.
• Concedes one narrow role for the State: printing specified quantities of posters, leaflets, manifestoes and voter slips and supplying them to candidates against a use-check (point 5).
• Wants political parties compelled by law to keep publicly auditable accounts and to hold regular internal elections as a democratic baseline, not as a subsidy trade-off (point 8).
• Rejects any legal ceiling on election expenses on the ground that ceilings only produce dishonest returns (points 9, 11, 12).
• General libertarian objection to laws that will be routinely violated: “why have laws that are observed only in their violation?” (point 10).
• Opposes compulsory voting, and warns that making voting compulsory would legitimise candidates providing transport as an inducement (point 13).