Black money comes into play as Maharashtra, Haryana assembly elections inch closer
Political parties began supplying black money for vote-buying to their workers in Haryana and Maharashtra before the election commission announced assembly poll dates for the two states on Friday, officials said.
Political parties began supplying black money for vote-buying to their workers in Haryana and Maharashtra before the election commission announced assembly poll dates for the two states on Friday, officials said.
The Election Commission (EC) can only direct the state police and other investigating agencies to probe the use of illicit funds in elections after declaring the voting schedule. And political parties are exploiting this escape clause.
Many candidates routinely dole out cash, alcohol and other goodies to voters in Indian elections for acquiring their support. The poll panel seized over Rs 300 crore in cash and more than two crore litres of liquor along with other illegal inducements during the parliamentary and assembly polls this year.
Election officials said the BJP distributed funds for poll management to most district and block-level committees in Haryana, especially in areas where the party is expected to do well based on an internal survey.
“A senior party representative declared at a party function recently that money will not be a constraint. Subsequently, huge amounts of cash reached the functionaries in-charge of these assembly constituencies,” a senior poll panel official said, expressing inability to tackle the problem.
Haryana’s close proximity to Delhi, Rajasthan and Punjab helps parties push liquor and cash into the state without drawing too much attention. The EC officials said that with the announcement of polls, instructions have been issued to the state administrations to put up check posts at all entry and exit points to prevent the inflow of black money and liquor.
In Maharashtra, the officials said, both the NCP and the BJP functionaries have received illicit funds for the elections which have been used to mobilise workers. “Some senior leaders of the two parties themselves distributed cash and we even informed the state government, but by the time a team reached the locations the job was done,” an EC official said.
Election commission sources also said that politicians in Maharashtra plan to distribute gifts to voters during the lengthy festival season in October. The total spending by the political parties in the polls is expected to be about Rs 2,000 crore, according to an unofficial estimate.
“It is very difficult to establish which party has distributed these goodies as the gifts don’t bear a party symbol – only the name of a party functionary who may not be contesting. In such a situation, electoral laws prohibit us from taking any action,” an election official said.
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.
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