The BJP’s poll promise of offering free COVID 19 vaccine to voters in Bihar is problematic and makes a mockery of the election commission’s model code and conduct. It also subverts Supreme Court’s guidelines where the apex court had said political parties should explain the budgetary provision required to fulfil poll promises.
Prima facie, much of the problems arising from such unrealistic and populist poll sop stems from absence of ethics or ethical foundation in Indian political system. Unlike the Westminster model of parliamentary democracy practiced in Britain, in the Indian version, propriety has seldom been on a premium.
The Model Code of Conduct, or the MCC, is based on the assumption that political parties and candidates would accord importance to issues of propriety, ethics and morality. In the absence of these lofty principles, the Westminster model is reduced to ashes.