NEW DELHI, 5 January 2005 — Ahead of the Assembly poll in Bihar, Jharkhand and Haryana in February, the Central Election Commission has asked the poll observers to maintain “absolute neutrality” to help ensure free and fair polls in the three crucial states.
Addressing nearly 800 observers, Chief Election Commissioner T.S. Krishna Murthy and other Election Commissioners B.B. Tandon and N. Gopalaswami said they have a “crucial role” and the success of the polls depended substantially on them.
Around 500 officers are being appointed as observers (consisting of 421 general ad 80 relating to poll expenditure) to supervise the election process in the three states. To ensure close monitoring and supervision, one general observer is being appointed for each assembly constituency and one expenditure observer for each district. Earlier, the commission used to allot two general observers and one expenditure observer to each district.
Taking a series of measures, the commission has directed that not more than three vehicles would be allowed to come within 100 meters of Returning Officer’s office at the time of filing of nominations.
To curb the tendency to overcrowd, the commission has directed that at the time of nominations only candidates, their proposers and four others be allowed to enter the office of Returning Officers.
The observers have been asked to make sure that the candidates’ affidavit should have details such as convictions, cases pending in courts, movable and immovable assets and qualifications and made available for public scrutiny without any loss of time. Observers were specifically asked to tour the assembly constituency extensively in order to build confidence among weaker and disadvantaged sections.
Observers were specifically asked to tour the assembly constituency extensively in order to build confidence among weaker and disadvantaged sections. The observers would constantly review execution of nonbailable warrants, recovery of illicit arms and collection of licensed arms from undesirable elements, an EC press note said.
They would also ensure that preventive arrests were not made to the advantage of any political party and enforce implementation of model code of conduct strictly.
Meanwhile, taking into account misuse of cell phones by Rashtriya Janata Dal MP from Madhepura in Bihar, Pappu Yadav in Beur jail, the Supreme Court yesterday decided in principle that mobile phone jammers should be installed in all jails across the country.
The court asked Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. and Reliance to inform it by next Tuesday as to how this facility could be installed in central jails, to start with, for preventing “highly influential persons and powerful personalities from misusing mobile phones while being lodged in jail”. The apex court said it will hear on Jan. 11 the appeal filed by CBI challenging the Patna High Court order granting bail to Yadav in the Ajit Sarkar murder case.
Central Bureau of Investigation, which investigated Ajit Sarkar murder case, yesterday argued for shifting Pappu Yadav out from Beur jail to another state, saying six cases pending against him could be tried in one court using video-conferencing. The agency said the video-conference facility was available in six jails at Sabarmati, Vellore, Mysore, Coimbatore, Palayamcottai (Tamil Nadu) and Poonmallee (Tamil Nadu).
Appearing for Yadav, senior advocate R.K. Jain contended that after the Dec. 7 incident at Beur jail, when mobile phones were seized from Yadav and his supporters, there had been no violation of the jail manual by the accused. He claimed Yadav is in jail without any evidence against him and that he should be granted bail.
In another important hearing, the Supreme Court yesterday refused to modify its order restricting to 30 the number of NRI students in two West Bengal government medical colleges.
The court had earlier asked the state government to scale down the number of NRI students in these two colleges from 99 to 30, resulting in agitation by the NRI students.
