People power EC in polls

I have personally got confirmation from my friends at Chennai and in villages (Kanchipuram, Arani and Vanthavasi) that both leading parties in Tamil Nadu had given money to vote (Rs 200 in villages and up to Rs 1,000 in Chennai).

Updated on: May 7, 2011, 22:43:37 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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I have personally got confirmation from my friends at Chennai and in villages (Kanchipuram, Arani and Vanthavasi) that both leading parties in Tamil Nadu had given money to vote (Rs 200 in villages and up to Rs 1,000 in Chennai).

This is one of the thousands of emails and SMS the Election Commission received from the people of the 5 poll-bound states.

The tip-off includes the misuse of money to threatening voters to violation of the model code of conduct. And, the proactive role played by citizens was a probable cause for the commission seizing over Rs 64 crore in the five states, with a record Rs 60 crore from Tamil Nadu alone.

"They (citizens) were acting as our eyes and ears and supplemented the official observer's role," said Chief Election Commissioner S Y Quraishi, who had provided his mobile number and email address to citizens. For the first time, mobile numbers of Election Commissioners and senior commission officials were advertised in the election bound states, evoking a good public response.

A citizen, Debangshu Chowdhury, from Kolkata told Quraishi through an e-mail about the possibility of bogus voting in certain polling booths in Jadavpur. The commission was quick to deploy additional forces and the citizen reverted back saying "we for the first time experienced a very fair election".

Srikanth Valuthur in Tamil Nadu turned into a citizen watchdog, much more than the commission's expectations. He distributed the commission telephone numbers to about 2,000 people in his locality in Chennai. And, there were several citizens like Valuthur in these five states.

"The fact that the citizens complained freely to the EC about the misuse of money power and also returned goodies augur well for our democracy," said Anil Bairwal, of NGO Association for Democratic Rights.

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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