Coming week is going to be busy for many lawyers and CAs as it is mandatory for politicians applying for assembly poll tickets to submit five different affidavits to EC, reports Chetan Chauhan.
The coming week is going to be busy for many lawyers and chartered accountants (CAs). As it is mandatory for politicians applying for assembly election tickets to submit five different affidavits to the Election Commission (EC), the lawyers and CAs also stand to make a lot of money. The price for the service ranges between Rs 3,000 and Rs 5,000.
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The office of the Chief Electoral Officer is already a regular haunt for many lawyers looking for politicians wanting to get their affidavits made.
Most applicants are, however, visiting the offices of the bigger lawyers and chartered accountants to get the job done.
“I have already asked my chartered account to prepare the affidavits for me,” said Ajay Maken, Transport Minister and Congress candidate from Rajouri Garden. Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit has asked her lawyers to do the needful. BJP candidate from Karol Bagh SP Ratawal said he too had entrusted the job to his lawyers.
But the problem is for candidates of the smaller parties and those wanting to contest as independents. Unlike the BJP and the Congress, who are assisting their candidates with the affidavits, the smaller parties and independent candidates don’t have infrastructure. “It has been left to the candidates to complete the nomination formalities,” said Mohammad Ali of Laloo Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal.
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Paper problems
• EC diktat: Ticket-seekers are required to submit details of income to the EC. BJP and Cong hopefuls have party help
• Self help: Those running as Independents or for smaller parties have to fend for themselves
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.
