Lok Sabha poll may go beyond five phases

The Election Commission and the Home Ministry have failed to reach an agreement on number of central security forces that can be spared for the smooth conduct of the elections, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Feb 25, 2009, 01:44:24 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Elections for the 15th Lok Sabha can extend beyond four or five phases. The Election Commission (EC) and the Home Ministry have failed to reach an agreement on number of central security forces that can be spared for the smooth conduct of the elections.

The 2004 general elections were held in four phases. The commission was considering holding 2009 elections in five phases with about 100 seats going to polls in each phase. The polls are scheduled for April-May this year. Exact dates for the elections are likely to be announced within a week. That will happen after the commission and home ministry officials hold further negotiations in the next two days to iron out their differences.

Commission officials said that they were asking for at least the same number of security forces from the Central government as deployed in 2004 general elections, if not more. Over 750 companies were deployed for the 2004 elections.

A team led by Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta met the three election commissioners on Tuesday and expressed the government’s inability to spare the forces as sought by the commission.

EC sources said home ministry officials cited heightened security threat after Mumbai terror attacks, increased Naxalite threat and insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast as major reasons for not been able to spare additional forces for the elections.

The elections are expected to cost Rs 1,300 crore to the public exchequer. The EC will need 70 lakh government servants, including security forces and state government officials for the smooth conduct of polls in over seven lakh booths across the country.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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