Considering The Freebies Culture In Indian Elections From The Purview Of Section 171B & 171C Of The IPC
Ali Murtuza Moosvi, Student of Law, Kirit P Mehta School of Law, NMIMS, Mumbai, Co-Founder of The Indian Conclave – Youth run Organization.
ABSTRACT
India, the mother of democracies, is magnanimous in terms of its glorious past, size, and stature. The hallmark of Indian democracy is such that unlike its predecessor nations who attained independence in the past, Bharat is the only country that achieved its independence through democratic means. For a nation whose diversity is humongous the very idea of having elections was opined to be mundane and imbecilic by the intellectual thinkers of the west but standing the test of time India successfully conducted its first elections in the year 1951 – 1952 which lasted for four months with great pomp and grandiose putting all animosity at rest, marking the beginning of a new epoch in India History, by reposing the faith of administration in the hands of her people by demonstrating that the people have the right to make decisions on their own, once again establishing the fact that power attained through the means and methods of democracy is the most ideal ways of achieving the goals of humanitarianism. Therefore, the people are the ultimate source of power in a democracy, and whether it succeeds or fails depends on their intelligence, awareness, and alertness. With time as we progressed as a proudly democratic society, we also simultaneously marked the beginning of many such fundamental problems with democracy and one such is that people seldom make logical or well-informed decisions. Most democracies appear to be driven by predetermined criteria and a need for rapid pleasure, which keeps them focused on the short-term development component of politics. Hence the rise in the culture of distribution of freebies thereby taints the integrity of not just elections but the constitutional morality at large and candidate smear campaigns have a significant impact on the preferences and personality of voters. Freebie distribution during the election or pre-election periods is a deeply rooted trend that is common in democratic India. Free gifts frequently range in the form of petty cash bribes to free rice, saris, or debt waivers, etc and parties are required to give them out as part of their electoral strategy. As a result, there is a rising practice of giving out gifts to voters during the run-up to and after elections. The likelihood of such enticing tactics is increasing, which contributes to their seeming electoral success and the formation of a vote bank. Therefore, the specter of corruption and duping the naive, credulous populace looms over all democratic processes. The type of free-market exploitation and voter duping with the goal of a "Welfare Society" simply addresses the symptoms of indifference rather than eradicating it from society. Therefore the paper fundamentally aims to scrutinize the thin line of difference between Freebies and Welfare Schemes and primarily focuses on the inconsistency in the Sections 171 B and 171 C of The Indian Penal Code, 1861 read with Section 123 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 in light of Ashwini Upadhyay v. Union of India3 as held by the Supreme Court of India.
Keywords: Freebies, Bribery, Welfare Schemes, Undue Influence, Elections
