NGOs to keep tabs on how the money flows

NGOs and the Election Commission have joined hands to do a reality check on campaign expenditure of candidates in five states where counting of votes will take place on December 8, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Nov 13, 2008, 01:30:25 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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NGOs and the Election Commission have joined hands to do a reality check on campaign expenditure of candidates in five states where counting of votes will take place on December 8. The states are Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Mizoram.

The commission has asked poll officers in these states to put the weekly account submitted by the candidates in the public domain with the help of NGOs. This is to enable voters to judge if the expenditure being shown is correct. The commission allows a maximum expenditure of Rs 10 lakh for an assembly seat, or about Rs 2 per voter.

Candidates are to submit accounts of campaign expenses to the office of the returning officer. Most candidates ensure that they don’t cross the limit.

But there are also unofficial expenses. In most cases, these are three to four times the prescribed limit, with huge amounts spent on alluring voters with gifts, money or liquor. “One-fifth of candidates in the recently concluded Karnataka assembly elections were given money for voting,” said Bhaskar Rao of the Centre for Media Studies. Candidates also spend a lot of money to buy the covert support of confidants of rival parties and keep their campaigners happy.

An insight into how much money goes into elections is available with the government. The recently revealed income tax returns by six national political parties indicate that election expenditure for an assembly seat is three times the prescribed limit.

But commission officials said returning officers don’t have the wherewithal to check the actual expenditure.

The commission has therefore asked election officers to provide details of expenditures to NGOs.

“We and sister organisations, will collect data and inform people about how much candidates are claiming to be spending,” said Anil Bhairwal of the Association for Democratic Reforms.

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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