Poll code can't restrain Centre, state from doing their duty: EC

Chandigarh, February 11

A month after the State Election Commission’s response was solicited on ensuring ‘drug-free polls’, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) S Karuna Raju has submitted before the Punjab and Haryana High Court that the EC did not supplant the state or the Centre’s functioning.

In an affidavit placed before the Bench of Justice Ajay Tewari and Justice Pankaj Jain on the EC’s behalf through counsel Namit Kumar, the CEO submitted that the government and other statutory authorities continue to be responsible for the general administration in a state where the model code of conduct was in force.

He added the state and the Centre were not absolved or restrained from performing their obligations following the conduct of elections or the enforcement of the poll code. The Bench was also told that the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) was the central law enforcement and intelligence agency involved in combating drug trafficking and the use of illegal substances in the country.

The Bench was further told that the commission had time and again reiterated its zero tolerance towards all forms of intimidation, threat, influence and bribing of electors. It was added that the commission, during its visit to the state in December last year for reviewing the poll preparedness, issued strict instructions to the enforcement agencies to step up vigil to prevent interstate and cross-border movement of drugs, liquor and cash.

It was added that the commission had deployed 15 nodal officers in the state for “more effective” election expenditure monitoring. It had also appointed about 15 former civil servants as special observers for the Assembly polls.

Speaking for the Bench, Justice Jain on the previous date of hearing had asserted that the picture showing gold-smoked mustard fields with the proud prosperous farmer would showcase this land of five rivers. But Punjab today was related to a portrait of wailing mother holding her son’s corpse, who died of drug overdose.

The Bench had also directed the state to specify whether it had a roadmap in place to fight the drug menace; whether state-sponsored scientific study by any government or non-governmental organisation had ever been conducted on the cause and the effect of addiction and whether the state had ever mapped the menace and found out the most-affected areas/districts.