Candidates wooing voters through ‘assurances’ from government officials

Besides trying to allure voters through monetary benefits and expensive gifts, candidates contesting panchayat elections and their supporters are wooing them (voters) by assuring them to get their long-pending issues resolved by senior functionaries in the administration.

Favour in police cases running with rivals, waiver of fines and penalties, allotment of fare price shops, amendments in revenue records, transfer of ownership rights and selection as lambardar are some of the problems that the candidates claim to resolve after the polling on October 15.

Senior functionaries, on the other hand, were upset over the tendency of candidates and their supporters, including leaders of various political parties, to call them at odd hours, even on holidays. They (government personnel) feel even worse when the callers are in an inebriated state and continue passing on calls from one person to another.

Acknowledging the tendency senior functionaries, including gazetted officers, regretted that candidates owing allegiance to various political parties had tried to harness political mileage by frequently calling them at odd hours and taking blind assurances regarding issues, which were not even related to them. In the majority of cases, the conversation was ‘broadcast’ on speakerphone to impress a larger group of voters, lamented one of the government personnel.

“What is more upsetting is that candidates or their supporters use informal language with the intent to make voters believe that they are intimately related to us,” said a revenue officer, saying that the majority of such calls were made late at night.

Former president of Punjab's Revenue Patwar Union Harvir Singh Dhindsa acknowledged that revenue personnel received a maximum number of calls regarding immediate the redressal of long-pending issues, some which had been waiting for final disposal of legal cases filed by some stakeholders.

“As almost all voters are directly or indirectly related with some peasant family, candidates more frequently boast to be related with all revenue personnel and call them to take assurances to get the voter’s job done,” said Dhindsa.

Dhindsa said in most cases the caller claimed to be ‘PA’ or ‘OSD’ to some elected representative in the Assembly or Parliament. “In other cases, the caller cautions us about his call in advance and informs us that he will put his call on speakerphone,” he added.

Some of the regional leaders were known to have amended their contact lists by saving phone numbers of their own people in the name of senior functionaries in different departments, including the police and commercial banks.

“As bank personnel usually don’t accommodate politicians or leaders, we try to impress our workers and voters by making calls to our own people pretending to be the officer concerned,” said a local leader.