NEW DELHI, 14 January 2005 — In a surprise move, the Congress party yesterday decided to contest 80 out of the 243 seats in the next month’s assembly elections in Bihar. However, the party left its doors open for talks with like-minded parties for an alliance.
“We have decided to contest 80 seats but the issue of alliance is still open. Now it is up to them (other parties) to think about tie-ups,” Congress sources said here yesterday.
The party will not put up candidates against sitting members of the Rashtriya Janata Dal and left parties, the sources said.
The decision was announced after Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s talks with RJD chief Lalu Prasad ended in an impasse on Wednesday with Lalu in no mood to concede more than 30 seats.
Congress’ Central Election Committee is likely to meet today to select candidates. The sources said that the state unit had approved the candidature of 106 and would present the list to the party leadership for the final approval of 30.
Speaking to the media in Patna however, Lalu said his party would fight the election in alliance with Congress. “I spoke to Sonia Gandhi and we will sort out the problems we have about seat-sharing. We will fight together, that is clear. All secular forces will fight together to win and defeat the communal forces. There can be a problem about 10 to 15 seats, but we will sort that out,” said Lalu.
“But the main thing is to win. These are not the first elections that we face. But the people of Bihar have always voted and given back a message that they will not let the forces who are not secular win in Bihar,” he added.
With over half of Bihar’s 50,000 polling stations expected to be declared sensitive, authorities claim these elections will be different from the past.
The isolated polling stations in Bihar have always been a problem during elections. Due to their inaccessibility and the poor communication network, incidents at the booths are reported after hours. It takes more than five hours on foot to reach over 5,000 booths.
However, as the authorities claim, this time the picture may be different. “We have planned that we should requisition all telephones — private or PCOs — near the polling stations and use their services during the elections,” said Shahadat Hasan Minto, spokesperson for the state election commission.
The state government is hoping that its new communication plan will work well. “We should be able to contact every booth. We should know first hand what’s happening in every booth,” claimed K.A.H. Subramaniam, Bihar’s chief secretary.
But even as these plans are being made, millions of state government employees are unlikely to do election-related jobs as they have been on strike for over 22 days and the government may just find it does not have enough manpower.
In a separate development, the federal Election Commission yesterday directed authorities in Haryana not to put on election duty employees who have been inducted to government service on or after Dec. 1 last year. The order would cover constables, teachers and other officials recruited on or after Dec. 1, 2004.
The move comes in the wake of findings by a commission team that large-scale recruitment had taken place in the state which is going to the polls on Feb. 3. The commission also ordered immediate transfer of superintendents of police of Panchkula and Ambala.
A two-member Election Commission team that went into alleged violations of the panel’s model code of conduct by the Om Prakash Chautala government in Haryana said in its report that large-scale recruitment of sub-inspectors and constables were made and at many places, interviews for recruitment in the police held and results announced after the model code of conduct came into force.
Additionally, appointments of cooks, sweepers, barbers and drivers have been made in the police department without going through proper procedures, they said.
