Direct Consensus democracy
The advent of Electronic Voting Machine, Internet, Mobile phones etc. We can easily bring direct consensus democracy through Electronic Voting Machine/Internet/Mobile Phone etc to India as is done in Switzerland successfully for the past several years since 1890. The need of the hour for most of the democracies across the world is to transition from representative democracy to Direct Consensus democracy.
1.) I have a suggestion for it by introducing a new constitution with bicameral parliament like the one we have right now. Important difference would be the upper house would comprise of engineers, graduates, post graduates, doctors, arts, commerce, finance and other qualified experts from various fields and walks of life who would be duly elected by graduates across the country in election over internet by use of Virtual Private Network set up by election commission of India.
2.) The lower house would comprise of elected representatives elected by rest of the people. In order to pass a law, legislation or bill both the houses need to agree by simple majority.
3.) In case they do not then the bill is not passed.
4.) In case the bill is passed and the people are satisfied it will become law.
5.) If people are dissatisfied they can get a referendum by getting signatures of 50,000 citizens and then invitation for suggestion or recommendation from citizens from all parts of India would be invited on a national website, top 10 popular suggestion would be judged by calling graduate citizens across the country to vote on them after deciding the top 10 suggestions.
6.) The top 10 suggestion can be put to national referendum based on the most polled suggestion by people of India it should be made a law, legislation or bill and the earlier law/laws is to be replaced with it.
7.) The citizens will have the power to recall any government official whether elected/selected or appointed including Judges.
8.) The citizens of India can create/amend/delete any law/legislation or bill at any point of time by getting signatures of at least 50,000 citizens followed by the procedure mentioned above.
9.) In case if there is a disagreement between graduate citizens and less educated citizens then the whole country will vote on a law proposed by less educated citizens and would be passed if it gets 70% votes majority.
10.) The Prime Minster would be selected from a pool of nominations filed by the nominees themselves on the Prime Ministerial election website to be hosted by Election Commission of India along with each Prime Ministerial candidates Qualifications, Detailed Profile including past performance in posts elected or selected, his manifesto, his vision and his criminal record and all the statements needs to be duly verified and if any citizen notices any discrepancy in nomination documents of a nominee candidate he should inform the same to Election Commission of India and the commission needs to reply with in 48 hours of lodging of complaint and if found to be true the profile needs to be altered with new facts discovered along with a stiff penalty decided by the court.
11.) The Prime Minister would be elected by people after going through all the profiles of Prime Ministerial Nominations in six months from the date of posting on the national website and after having a national media debate on media every third Sunday for Six months. The period of voting would be six months; the voting process would allow people to rate the candidates from 0-10 points. The top 10 nominees who win the highest number of points will be final nominees. once the top 10 nominees are known then there would be a nation wide election to chose one amongst them. The nominee who wins the highest number of votes will be declared Prime Minister for 10 Years. The Prime Minster can be recalled by the citizens at any point of time during his tenure by initiating recall election across the country, To initiate recall elections at least 1,00,000 Citizens need to sign a recall petition by citing the reasons about the same, once 1,00,000 signatures are attained the process needs to started within a month’s time and completed within three months.
12.) The procedure for nomination of Chief Minister would be the same except that it would be conducted by State Election Commission.
13.) The procedure for election of Chief Minister would be the same except that this would happen at the state level. To initiate recall of Chief Minister at least 50,000 Citizens from the respective state need to sign a recall petition by citing the reasons about the same, once 50,000 signatures are attained the process needs to started within a month’s time and completed within three months.
14.) The transition from representative democracy should be done in a phased manner in order to prevent confusion first by implementing in the order mentioned Lok Sabha members, Rajya Sabha members, Prime Minister, Sate Legislative Assembly members, State Legislative Council members, Chief Minister, Muncipal Wards, Panchayat samithi and other electoral positions.
The Ten fundamental rights recognised by the constitution would be
a) Verifiable voting with receipt issued to voter along with his choices mentioned.
b) The right to service.
c) The right to information.
d) The right to debate.
e) The right to referendum.
f) The right to recall elected/selected/appointed representatives.
g) The right to create/amend/delete any law/legislation or bill.
h) The right to equality.
i) The right to freedom.
j) The right to freedom from exploitation.
k) The right to freedom of religion.
l) Cultural and educational rights.
15.) Political party system would be unconstitutional.
Questions or Suggestions are welcome about my proposed Modern Constitution of India. Doing the same thing again and again, expecting different results is insanity. Let us get rid of this nuisance.
