Intensifying its election expenses monitoring activities, the Election Commission will now post expenditure details of individual candidates on the public domain after every inspection.
Revealing this to The Hindu in an interview, Manoj Kumar Meena, Chief Electoral Officer for Karnataka, said for the first time expenditure details would be available for the public to see and challenge during the elections itself. “Earlier, these details were available for the public after candidates submitted their expenditure statement to the commission within 30 days of completion of an election,” Mr. Meena said.
“The 42 election expenditure observers deployed for the Lok Sabha polls in Karnataka will inspect and tally the shadow registers maintained by the Returning Officers and the records maintained by the respective candidates. The inspections by the expenditure observers will be done three times after the filing of nominations till the day of the election. After every such inspection, the expenditure details will be scanned and posted on the District Election Officer’s (DEO) website and a link to this will be provided on the CEO Karnataka website for public viewing. If anyone finds that the candidate has provided false information, he/she can report the issue to the commission,” Mr. Meena said, asserting that such a violation by the candidate can even result in disqualification.
While there is no cap on how much parties can spend, candidates’ expenses are limited to ₹95 lakh for Lok Sabha constituencies. The expenditure limit refers to the amount a candidate is allowed to legally spend on election campaigning, including public meetings, rallies, advertisements (including through social media and influencers), posters, banners, and vehicles.
Asserting that the commission is rigorously monitoring suspicious bank transactions and digital payments, Mr. Meena said: “Repeated payments of similar amounts from digital payment wallets to multiple recipients will be analysed daily at the district level.”
To deal with urban apathy
Admitting that urban apathy is another huge challenge apart from money power, Mr. Meena elaborated on the various strategies being adopted. “Apart from printing QR codes on voter slips to help voters navigate their way to the polling station, we are also planning voter facilitation centres in cluster polling booths and introducing a token system at the booths,” he said.
The voter facilitation centre will be like a help desk for people to locate their booth in the cluster, and if tokens are issued, it will be a hassle-free voting experience. “People tend to go away after seeing huge queues at the booths. Our booth-level officers (BLOs) will guide them to their room,” he said.
Voter turnout
“The lowest voter turnout in the State in the past elections has been from the IT hub of Bengaluru. Apathy in the urban electorate is a trend observed across the country. We have learnt some lessons from the previous elections. We are roping in resident welfare associations (RWAs) to create awareness and step up our voter slip distribution, especially in gated communities, where our personnel find it difficult to go. We are hoping to see voter slip distribution to touch at least 85%,” Mr. Meena said.
He said awareness activities were already being carried out in garment factories. “We have to make sure that they will get a holiday on the polling day. We will also reach out to IT professionals through their employers,” he said. Pointing out that mid-week polling day had not shown any major change in the voting pattern during the Assembly polls, the CEO said: “It all depends on people’s will. If they want to vote they will.”
