Assets details on EC site, leaders wary of tax raids

Election Commission has decided that details of applicants? assets ?which they?ve to furnish to the poll panel ? will be put on EC website by November 18.

Published on: Nov 4, 2003, 14:39:00 IST

PTI | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Delhi’s politicians have got worries other than whether they will receive an election ticket or not. The Election Commission (EC) has decided that details of applicants’ assets — which they’ve to furnish to the poll panel — will be put on the EC website by November 18. Where, it can be reasonably expected, they will be seen by the taxman.

Aspirants fear that the Income Tax Department may, after November 18, probe into all their assets and financial dealings.

The job for I-T officials will be made easy as the candidates will have to give their Income Tax Permanent Account Number (PAN) and details about the income tax returns filed.

The candidates are required to submit five affidavits in all, including on their past crime records if any, educational qualifications, movable and immovable assets and financial status. Giving information about pending criminal cases will not pose much of a problem. Applicants for BJP tickets will only have to give a self-declaration. Congress ticket-seekers will have to provide a certificate from the local police.

But providing information about their assets like jewellery and their value is proving to be a headache. Many ticket aspirants were heard asking party office-bearers whether they could say that their in-laws gave them the jewellery or that it belongs to their daughters-in-law.

Another area of concern for ticket seekers is the details about property.

A section of the affidavit asks about the number of doors in their houses, their total area and current market value. “It is very difficult to state the exact value of a property,” grumbled a Congress leader.

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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