New Delhi, March 19
For the first time, the Election Commission is planning to appoint Special Observers for Punjab, Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir among other states for the conduct of free and fair poll in the states.
The commission today directed the poll observers to strictly enforce the Model Code of Conduct.
“The Observers play an important statutory role in ensuring free and fair elections. They act as the eyes and ears of the commission in the field”, Chief Election Commissioner
T. S. Krishna Murthy told over 1,000 general observers appointed to monitor the elections.
The commission may be appointing special observers for Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal, Punjab and Haryana to coordinate with General Observers in the conduct of free and fair poll there.
The CEC told reporters that the commission may be appointing some more special observers for some other states, including
Jammu and Kashmir.
Suggesting a series of dos and don’ts for the observers, the CEC and other two Election Commissioners B.B. Tandon and N. Gopalaswami said the observers should look at filing of affidavits by candidates and their wide dissemination, accounts furnished by the candidates from time to time to ensure that the expenditure was within the prescribed ceiling, ensuring balanced deployment of Central and state forces.
The observers were also told not to take families along with them, travel only by non-airconditioned cars and stay in government guest houses and not in hotels.
In all 1,086 general observers and 543 expenditure observers have been appointed this time.
Observing that the commission was setting up ‘Helpline’ for the benefit of electorate in major towns, the ECs said to ensure that these Helplines were in a position well before the polling day and functioning.
Directing that reports of any poll violence should be communicated to the commission at the earliest, the ECs told them that classification of serious and non-serious constituencies should be done fairly with reasonable criteria and local deployment of forces should be approved by the observers.
The observers should also visit trouble-torn areas in order to instil confidence among weaker sections, it said.
To maintain maximum security on EVMs, one key of the EVMs should be with the observers.
The CEC also asked the observers to create voter-friendly environment in each polling station.
