New Delhi, February 19
The Election Commission today dismissed the personalised attack by Haryana Chief Minister and INLD chief Om Prakash Chautala on Chief Election Commissioner T.S. Krishna Murthy as “beneath contempt.”
The poll panel said “it is deeply pained and anguished by certain remarks, which amount to character assassination and particularly singling out one of the members.”
“Such remarks bring down a constitutional authority in public esteem, the same shows the lack of understanding of the Commission’s functioning,” it said.
Launching a personal attack on the Chief Election Commissioner, Mr Chautala said “Krishna Murthy has lost his mental balance.”
Pointing a finger at former CEC M.S. Gill, he said, the Congress had favoured him by nominating him to the Rajya Sabha as a reward for extending favours during his tenure.
He had, earlier, threatened to expose those poll panel members who had sought plots in the state.
The Commission said the multi-member poll panel took all decisions unanimously.
Making an attempt to clarify the reason for advancing the date of counting in Haryana, the Commission said it had been a uniform practise in the past that counting was taken up after the polling process in all concerned states were over.
However, the Commission on reconsideration felt that the counting of votes in Haryana could be taken up on February 23 itself when the polling in Bihar and Jharkhand would be over on that day and that the results of elections in Haryana even if announced on the evening of February 23 would not have any adverse effect on the polling in Bihar and Jharkhand.
Apart from the Commission’s move to experiment with the delinked election process, the poll panel also faced the technical problem of
availability of security forces in adequate strength and the representations by the Haryana bureaucracy following intimidation by the INLD.
The poll panel said it had taken adequate precaution to enable all the electorate to exercise their franchise in a free and fair manner.
The Commission also decided against declaration of results in those constituencies where the margin of votes between the winning candidate and his nearest rival was less than the total number of postal ballots.
Meanwhile, the INLD is planning to petition the poll panel on Monday to seek the withdrawal of the announcement of advancing counting as it is “unconstitutional”.
As per the Representation of Peoples Act, the INLD said it was mandatory to take up the postal ballot for counting before the rest of the votes.
The party said even if the declaration of results as suggested by the Commission was deferred on this account, the polling of postal ballots, which would be received after February 23, could be influenced in favour of the Congress, which is heading the government at the Centre. The INLD chief said if the Commission, which has been rectifying its stand time and again, did not take its objections seriously, the poll panel’s decision on postal ballot could be
challenged in the court.
Officials in the Commission were of the view that most of the postal ballots would have been received by the ROs since the polling for Haryana was held on February 3.
An analysis of the voting pattern indicate that less than two per cent of those eligible exercise their franchise through postal ballot.
Meanwhile, Rajya Sabha MP Tarlochan Singh, who won with the backing of the INLD, said the poll panel had been keen on preponing the counting it could done it on February 23 morning after holding the byelection to six polling booths a day earlier.
