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The Fourth Annual Conference on Electoral and Political reforms will be held in Lucknow on Saturday and Sunday, August 18th and 19th, 2007. The Chief Election Commissioner, Shri N. Gopalaswami will be present. Other delegates will include NGOs, Civil Society Organizations, Activists from People's Movements, eminent citizens, intellectuals, jurists, senior representatives from the Government and the media.

This year the theme will be on reform of Political Parties. In previous years, the Conference was held in Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Patna. The immediate background of this year’s Conference is the three Citizen led Election Watches in the 2007 Assembly elections of Punjab, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. Citizens, volunteers, activists and NGOS from these states will share their experiences and the impact of their work on the electoral process. Election Watch has now taken place in all major National and State Elections since 2002 and grew out of the landmark Supreme Court Judgments of May 2, 2002 and March 13, 2003 mandating disclosure of candidate financial, criminal and educational background.

Experience gathered since 2002 in various Election Watch and related work, has revealed that the awareness of criminalization of politics with concrete data has grown amongst the public, media and the political parties. Although significant progress has been made, information on over 40,000 candidates since 2002 shows that the level of criminalization has not yet gone down to the extent that citizens would expect in a healthy democracy. With this in view the agenda of Reform of Political Parties has now been taken up since they are directly responsible for this state of affairs. Already, political parties have started reacting to this work, and have started the process of improving the profile of their candidates.

A detailed agenda will be sent later. Your presence at the Conference will significantly encourage the people and organizations working on these issues. Please do send us any suggestions on what needs to be done, as well as the names of people and organizations who should be invited.

A line in confirmation of your participation would help us immensely. You can reach us at , and .

We look forward to seeing you in Lucknow. Kind regards.

Professor Trilochan Sastry 237, Munirka Vihar, New Delhi 011-65901524.

Anumeha 237, Munirka Vihar Delhi-67