Chandigarh, May 7
The print media
blitzkrieg launched through catchy advertisements by the various surrogate
organisations and political parties against their opponents is likely to land
the parties and candidates in trouble.
Sources said that expenditure
observers appointed by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to monitor the
expenditure on the poll campaign by candidates have started an exercise to
collect all information regarding these advertisements from various newspapers
and electronic media.
The commission has appointed senior officers of the
level of Deputy Commissioner of the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) in each Lok
Sabha constituency to monitor the expenditure on the election campaign on the
day-to-day basis by candidates in the fray. All candidates have to submit the
returns of expenditure in writing every third day to these observers.
In
Punjab, the two major political parties, the Congress and the Shiromani Akali
Dal (SAD), and the surrogate organisations and certain individuals supporting
these parties are running a high-voltage advertisement campaign through the
print and electronic media, besides audio and video cassettes and CDs.
However, what has been troubling these observers is that the expenditure on
these advertisements is not being debited to any candidate(s). Under the rules,
even an advertisement inserted by any supporter of a candidate is supposed to be
considered as part of the election campaign and expenditure incurred on that is
to be debited to the account of the candidate concerned.
Sources said that
certain observers had collected all the advertisements got published by the main
political parties and surrogate organisations in daily newspapers. They had also
got the list of advertisement rates from the newspapers concerned. After
tabulating the entire expenditure on these advertisements, the amount in equal
proportion would be debited to the account of each candidate of the party which
is supposed to be directly benefited by the advertisements concerned.
Suppose
certain advertisement campaign has proved helpful to the candidates of “A” party
which has put up “X” number of candidates, all expenditure on that advertisement
campaign would be equally distributed among the total number of candidates and
debited to their election accounts in the state, an observer said.
When asked
that how he would dig out that advertisements got published by surrogate
organisations benefited a particular candidate or party, the observer said: “We
belong to the IRS which has all the means to find out the source of funding of
these advertisements”. First the surrogate organisations would be asked the
source. In case they failed to reveal then the newspapers concerned and the
electronic media firms running the TV channels would be asked to give the
details of the cheques and drafts they got as part of the payment,” he said.
No
individual or organisations could make a cash payment above Rs 50,000 without
stating the permanent account number (PAN) of income tax. If payment was to be
made through a bank draft or cheque from a bank account, then it was also
mandatory for the bank concerned to have the PAN of the party or individual.
From that PAN, the party or the individual, who paid the advertisement bill,
could be identified.
“We are also collecting details of audio and video
cassettes and compact discs (CDs) which are being used extensively for the
election campaign purposes by the various political parties. We have the
information that parties have spent lakhs of rupees on such cassettes,” said
another observer.
However, what can really bring trouble to the candidates
concerned is the limit on expenditure fixed by the ECI. No candidate could spend
above Rs 25 lakh on his or her campaign in a constituency. However, the
advertisement campaign bill of certain main political parties and surrogate
organisations would run into several crores of rupees if the advertisement
campaign on electronic media is also taken into account.
