Election Commission to monitor black money trail

In a bid to crack whip on use of black money in polls, the Election Commission has set up a monitoring committee of senior officials drawn from revenue and intelligence services for better coordination and prompt action on suspect financial movement.

Updated on: Mar 12, 2014, 01:47:58 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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In a bid to crack whip on use of black money in polls, the Election Commission has set up a monitoring committee of senior officials drawn from revenue and intelligence services for better coordination and prompt action on suspect financial movement.

The commission has set up a committee for the first time before polls and it will meet twice in a week to generate common leads and flag suspects money trials that could be used to disturb the electoral level playing field.

The agencies included in the committee are Income Tax Intelligence, Financial Intelligence Unit, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, Central Economic Intelligence Bureau, Narcotics Control Bureau and intelligence wings of Border Security Force, Seema Suraksha Bal (SSB) and of Railway Protection Force.

The officials said the basic idea for having a coordination committee was to provide quick inputs to the ground level enforcement officers to take action. "It also provides us an opportunity to monitor inflow of black money in polls. Earlier, the inputs being provided by intelligence agencies were getting lost at the ground level," an official said.

The in-charges of various agencies, who are part of the committee, have also been asked to ensure that action is taken on the intelligence collected by their regional or state level offices. "The information should reach the relevant returning officer or expenditure observer at the shortest possible time," the official said.

The EC has also asked these agencies to compile their respective information in a standard format so that the poll panel is updated about the use of illegal money and other inducements in the polls.

The Election Commission also briefed expenditure observers about these measures at a meeting on Tuesday. The observers were informed about the modus operandi of the political parties and candidates to pump in black money in polls, especially a few days before voting.

The EC has identified constituencies vulnerable to high expenditure across India. Sources said that most of these constituencies are in the southern states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh and in some northern states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Delhi, Haryana and Punjab. Some parts of the north-east have also been identified as vulnerable to abuse use of money to allure voters.

EC has seized around Rs 100 crore in last assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. A substantial but a lesser amount was seized during assembly polls in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, EC officials said.

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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