AHMEDABAD/NEW DELHI, 1 August — A nine-member Election Commission team yesterday began assessing whether the situation in communal violence-battered Indian state of Gujarat was conducive to holding early assembly polls.
The team, which arrived in the state capital from New Delhi Tuesday, began its mission with a meeting with Gujarat’s Chief Election Officer Gurcharan Singh.
The team will now divide itself into three groups that would visit various parts of the state, including the two largest cities of Ahmedabad and Baroda that were the worst hit in the bloodiest sectarian clashes India has witnessed in a decade.
They will assess the situation on the ground over three days.
Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who belongs to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has sought early elections arguing that only polls would clear "the atmosphere of uncertainty" created by the sectarian violence that left over 1,000 people dead.
Modi yesterday claimed that the BJP would return to power in the state in the forthcoming assembly elections. He said that the government had taken all steps to restore normalcy in the state. "Gujarat is already geared up to vote the BJP to power," said Modi adding, "I am just keeping things in motion."
Officials in the state election commission said the teams would also meet various voluntary groups and political parties. They would invite groups that have made representations before them in New Delhi about the situation in the state.
Many opposition parties and people’s groups have argued that the situation is not appropriate for holding elections yet as thousands of violence-displaced are still languishing in refuge camps. Modi, who has been accused of tacitly backing the mobs that mainly targeted Muslims during the communal conflagration for three months since February-end, had dissolved the assembly on July 19.
The Election Commission team would also look into the preparation of electoral rolls in the state. The main opposition Congress party had alleged that a large number of voters are yet to be listed.
There has been immense pressure on the commission to announce the dates of the Gujarat polls. But several people’s groups, rights workers, academics and artists have opposed early elections.
In a letter to Chief Election Commissioner J.M. Lyngdoh, members of the Movement for Secular Democracy (MSD), some other human rights groups, artists, academics and eminent citizens said elections under the present circumstances would lead to the denial of the right of franchise to the violence-displaced.
