Association for Democratic Reforms ADR

3 min read

Background:

  • non-profit
  • founded in 1999
  • by a group of professors from the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad)
  • ADR chairman - Sastry — who got his bachelor’s degree from IIT (Delhi), an MBA from IIM (Ahmedabad), and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) — approached his colleagues at IIM (A).  

Organisation

  • The non-profit has two wings —
    • ‘Election Watch’ - concerned with election activities including vote awareness programmes
    • ‘Political Party Watch’ - deals with political parties and related issues — such as electoral bonds. 

Style of working

  • ADR works on two levels for voter awareness.
  1. The first is holding outreach programmes such as door-to-door campaigns, street plays, and conducting events in schools.
  2. The second is social media campaigns through which “we put out our reports and the most important report is about the candidates just before the election”. 

Challenging - Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Bill, 2023:

  • law for the appointment of India’s top election officers, including the chief election commissioner.
  • law mandates that a selection committee
    1. headed by the prime minister,
    2. a Union minister, and
    3. the leader of the opposition
    • would appoint the chief election commissioner (CEC) and other election commissioners (ECs).
  • tabled in the monsoon session last year and passed in the winter session
  • law reverses a landmark SC ruling from March 2023, which held that members of the Election Commission of India should be appointed on the advice of a committee comprising
    1. the PM,
    2. the Chief Justice of India, and
    3. the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.

Ongoing struggle

  • Its 2015 petition to bring all political parties within the ambit of the Right to Information Act.
  • It’s also part of a petition seeking 100 percent verification of all votes cast through EVMs. April 2024
    • "Don't try to bring the system down.' : Supreme Court rejects return to ballot paper petition filed by Prashant Bhushan for an NGO. Court while reprimanding Prashant Bhushan said,
    • "Fortunately, we are now in our sixties. We have seen what used to happen earlier. Have you forgotten that? If you have forgotten that, I am sorry, I have not forgotten."
    • Justice Sanjiv Khanna, presiding over a two-judge bench, told Advocate Prashant Bhushan who appeared for petitioner-NGO Association for Democratic Reforms seeking 100% verification of EVM votes with VVPAT slips.
    • At present, 5 EVMs are randomly verified against VVPAT slips per Assembly segment.
  • Both cases are currently ongoing.   

Achievements

  • Bihar Election Watch in October‐November 2005 resulted in intense pressure on the chief minister-designate (Nitish Kumar) due to the extensive media coverage of candidate background (sic)”. 

“As a result, for the first time, Bihar has a council of ministers without any known criminal record,” says the ADR website, about that year. 

  • PIL - Supreme Court’s 2002 ruling that candidates must make full disclosure of their antecedents,
  • The introduction of the None of the Above, or the NOTA button on Electronic Voter Machines (EVMs), in 2014,
  • The 2013 landmark Lily Thomas case - SC ruled that an MP or MLA who has been convicted for a punishment that carries a jail sentence of more than two years will be disqualified from holding office.
    • It was this ruling that led to the controversial disqualification of Rahul Gandhi as an MP after his conviction in a defamation case last March. The SC stayed that ruling last August.

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