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Proposed   administrative   procedure
#LM.09   :   Recalling   MPs

Purpose : Reduce damage cuased by nexuses of MPs.

    Contents
  1. Background
  2. The problem
  3. Proposed ADDITIONAL procedure
  4. The ONLY drawback
  5. Draft of the law to enact procedure #LM.07
  6. How can citizens enact LM.09

Background

The purpose is to bring India's administration/courts at par with West. How? By improving record keeping in GoI-offices and reducing nexuses in GoI-offices and courts. How? We would need several laws to achieve that.

LM.09 is one of these proposed laws. (To see the list of some of the laws, please click here). The proposed law LM.09 will improve law-making at National level.


The   Problem
  1. Over 999 out of 1000 MPs sell out. Within 6 weeks after getting elected, most MPs start focusing on bribery rather than law-making.

  2. Even if a handful of MPs are committed, those MPs' priorities may not be in the sync with the priorities of the common men. eg Many MPs have worked overtime to ensure that Universities, schools etc keep getting hundreds of crores of rupees a year while they have zero interest in meeting some urgent needs of the nation such increasing the number of courts, police constables etc. So even we have a non-corrupt MPs, chances that he would follow common men's agenda are slim.


Proposed Solution : #LM.09 --- Recallable Assistant MPs

The procedures, as defined by Recallable Assistant MPs Act, are as follows
  1. The District Collector will work as the Registrar for the procedures defined below, or he can delegate some of the tasks to the Additional Collectors or Mamlaatdaar/Talaaties.

  2. Any person can pay a fee of Rs 5000/-, and register himself as an "Assistant/Advisor [to] MP" in a Parliament Constituency. The Assistant MP will need to pay a fee of Rs 200 every month to the Registrar to handle the operations. The fee will be waived if over 5% citizens Approve him.

  3. Any citizen may or MAY NOT, select any of the Assistant MP as his representative in the Parliament.

  4. To select an Assistant MP, a citizen voter will need to go to the Registrar's office, pay a fee of Rs 2 to Rs 5 to the clerk, show his voter-ID or ration card, specify the name/number of Assistant MP whom he wishes to appoint as his "Assistant/Advisor to MP".

  5. The clerk will enter the citizen's ID number, Assistant MP's serial number etc into the computer and the computer will the reciepts. A sample of the reciept is shown below

    SAMPLE   layout   of   the Reciept
    that the citizen will get when he registers an Advisor to MP

    

    Registration  of  Assistant to MP 
     (Fee : Rs 3)
    

Dear Speaker/MP, 
        I advice you to consider following person as my
Advisor to MP hence forth  - The Citizen.  

              Reciept Number   3245-345-01                 
                        Date   28/03/2001
Citizen's Ration Card Number   67897899  
              Citizen’s Name   Prakash Mehta   

             Candidate Number  00245   
               Candidate Name  Jethabhai Patel
 
Clerk’s name, number, sign  Suresh Pandya/67-092/S Pandya 

Citizen’s Thumb Print


  6. A citizen can change his Assistant MP anyday anytime after paying Rs 2 to Rs 5 fee.

  7. For each candidate, for each Parliament constituency, the Registrar will publish the statements every week, showing entries of citizens who have registered their Secondary MPs. The entries will be sorted by ration card number sand the reciept numbers.

    SAMPLE of the List that each Candidate will get 

    Candidate Number : 00245
Candidate Name   : Jethabhai Patel

Constituency Number : 345/544
Constituency Name   : Ahmedabad - Gujarat

Number of voters : 11,45,267

Number of citizens whom you Reprensened, as of last week     53,354   
Number of citizens who selected you last week                     8
Number of citizens who recalled you last week                     2

Number of citizens you Represent = 53354 + 10 - 2 = 53362


    

Citizens who appointed you as Representative

       Card No        Name             Reciept No  Previous Opinion
 1     2158112      Divan, Sudhir         21851        -
 2     2350222      Mehta, Vimal          58783        -  
 3     2885461      Jain, Bimal           40203        - 
 4     3156068      Patel, Suhas          13720        -
 5     3737486      Khan, Suhel           42995        NO
 6     4040625      Sai, Samir            36446        - 
 7     4514433      Shankar, P            56375        -
 8     4759652      Khan, Suleman         57412        NO
 9     5176682      Seth, Vineet          99653        -
10     5311764      Singh, Jasvinder      19675        -


    

Citizens who recalled your Representation 

       Card No        Name               Reciept No  Previous Opinion
 1     4020310      Khan, Akbar            14964        -
 2     4210275      Holkar, Babu           19675       YES
 3     4633510      Ramesh, P              42995        -
 4     5637330      Divakar, Sudhir        57412        -


  8. Any Assistant MP can present a bill in the Parliament by paying a fee of Rs 100,000/- to the Speaker of Loksabha.

  9. On a perticular Bill the Assistant MP can register his YES/NO opinion at District Collector's office after paying a fee of Rs 500/-

  10. On a perticular Bill, the Assistant MP chosen by the citizen will represent that citizen, and if the citizen has NOT chosen any Assistant MP, then the Primary MP will represent the citizen.

  11. Example :
    1. suppose the population of constituency is X i.e. say 1000,000
    2. Supose there are 3 Assistant MPs A, B and C, each having approval of say for example 50,000, 150,000 and 200,000. And 600,000 have no Assistant MP.
    3. On a perticular Bill, say MP votes YES, B votes YES while A and C vote NO.
    4. Then
      YES-votes = votes of MP + Votes of B = 600,000 + 150,000 = 750,000
      NO-votes = votes of A + Votes of C = 50,000 + 200,000 = 250,000
    5. So
      YES-fraction = 750,000/1000,000 = 0.75
      NO-fraction = 250,000/1000,000 = 0.25


  12. The Speaker will thus calculate the YES-fractions and NO-fractions of ALL the constituencies, and will declare the Bill as passed of YES-fraction exceeds NO-fraction.

  13. Assistant MP's salaries, limitations etc [please see the acts for the details]
  14. Explicit recall of MLA : If any Assistant MP's approval count is over 50% and 5% more than residual approval count of the main MP, then within 14 days, the Speaker will appoint that Assistant MP as main MP, and the ex-MP will become the Assistant MP with approval count equal to his residual approval count.

    Example : Say a person is a MP in a constituency of 10,00,000 voters. Say 3 individuals A, B and C have registered themselves as Assistant MLAs. Say 50000(5%) have approved A, 100000(10%) have approved B and 150000(15%) have approved C. So (residual) approval count of the main MP will be 100% - 5% - 10% - 15% = 70%. Now say approval count of C increases to 55%. Then residual approval count of the main MP will fall to 100% - 5% - 10% - 55% = 100% - 70% = 30%. So C's count is now over 50% and over 5% more than that of the main MP. So within 14 days, the Speaker will need to appoint C as MP, and the existing MP will become assistant MP with approval count of 30%.
     Thus citizens can EFFECTIVELY recall his MP by appointing a Secondary MP, and the citizen can EFFECTIVELY recall Secondary MP as well by approving some other candidate as the Secondary MP.


The ONLY drawback of this proposal --- Less confidentiality

     The ONLY drawback of the scheme is that the list of citizens who have opted a perticular person as their Assistant MP is NOT fully confidential. It will be as confidential as bank statement or share market transactions.

     But how relevant is this drawback? Consider other tools of Democracy except election procedure such as filing a complaint against govt officer, or filing a PIL or collecting signatures of a protest petition or organizing a public protest. How confidential are these means? There is zero confidentiality for all practical purpose. In case of petition signatures have to be given. Basically, there is no confidentiality these days anyway.

     The drawback is minor with the advantages Recall procedures provide --- citizens' control over the representative and the reprsentation.


Draft for #LM.09

     To enact the administrative procedure #LM.09 in India, a law needs to be passed in the Parliament of India. For the the EXACT Draft (Text) of the law, please click here.


How can citizens enact this procedure

     IMO, it would be wiser for the citizens/activists to first enact the procedure #LM.03 in Parliament, and then pass this draft in the Parliament.



Next - LM.10 : Improving functioning of City Councils