The Chief Electoral Officer, Telangana, Rajat Kumar, urged the civil society organisations to play their role during elections, and mobilise public for better implementation of model code of conduct.

He made this appeal at an interactive session organised by Telangana Election Watch, a civil society initiative to monitor elections, here on Thursday, and said educating public would take the quality of democratic debate several notches up.

Eternal vigilance is the cost of democracy, he said citing from a quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson, and added that contrary to public opinion that Election Commission and CEO office were responsible for implementing the code, final accountability lies with the public.

Politicians feel answerable to people from their constituencies, and we need to capture their fear, for posing relevant questions to them, he said. He urged people to keep vigil on district, constituency, and booth-level electoral official too, apart from politicians. To a suggestion that police should conduct breath analyser tests during elections, Mr. Kumar said the State has fewer number of policemen in Telangana than in the joint State, and that the State was hard pressed for officers during elections.

However, curtailing individual liberty was not the mandate of the Election Commission, he said. He requested the representatives of Election Watch from all the districts to study the brochures and Acts on the Election Commission’s website.

To a question on the future technology enabling voters to exercise their franchise from home, Mr. Kumar said it was not impossible, but the Representation of the People Act needs to be amended for that.