After Arunachal Pradesh Catholic Association and Nyishi Baptist Church Council, the Nyishi Elite Society (NES) has also launched ‘Clean election’ campaign on Sunday from Seppa town under East Kameng district. NES also announced that the campaign will touch all the Nyishi inhabited districts. The clean election campaign will target all forms of electoral malpractices prevailing in the state with money culture being the most serious one. It is praiseworthy that religious bodies representing Church, Nyedar Namlo, etc are taking lead role in the fight against electoral malpractices. Their involvement will definitely have positive impact.
With NES also joining the ‘Clean election’ campaign, the movement has acquired more relevance. Other community based organizations should also join the campaign and make it statewide movement. The money culture is the biggest threat to the progress of Arunachal Pradesh. It also undermines the democratic values. People sell their votes in exchange of monetary benefit to the politicians. In several assembly constituencies, massive amount of money is spent by the candidates to win the elections. After winning election, the candidates get busy to recover the money and hardly care for the development issues. Arunachal has suffered a lot due to the money culture. Only those persons who have immense bank balance can dream of becoming people’s representative. These people join politics only to multiply their wealth. Therefore, this clean election movement has come in as fresh breathe of air. Even if it succeeds to convince minority section of population, the impact will be massive. People voting for candidates without taking money will be a paradigm shift in the context of Arunachal politics.