Telangana assembly elections 2018: Pink ballots in vogue since 1952, can't change now, says CEC

HYDERABAD: Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) O P Rawat and election commissioners Sunil Arora and Ashok Lavasa on Friday conducted review meetings and assured free, fair and peaceful elections in Telangana. The top election officials directed the state election machinery to take action on complaints regarding poll code violations.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) has been receiving complaints about phone tapping, use of SHE teams to campaign for the ruling party, distribution of bond papers by a candidate giving poll promises, among others, in the run-up to the Telangana assembly elections. "We feel the concerns that we had one month before, when we came for the first time, have been addressed by the state machinery with arrangements being brought to a satisfactory level," said CEC O P Rawat.

Following complaints by some political parties about the partisan attitude of government and police officials, the CEC asked collectors and SPs to maintain neutrality. The CEC also ordered surprise inspection of jails to prevent criminals from trying to influence polls from prison.

In wake of complaints about phone tapping, Telangana DGP gave a written assurance to Telangana chief electoral officer Rajat Kumar that no phone tapping of any political party leader is being done.

Reacting to concerns about urban voter apathy, the CEC ordered the poll machinery to take up drives to increase voter percentage. Pointing out that while there were no bogus voters, there were duplicate voters, who he said would be removed for the Lok Sabha polls. Rawat said that the poll regulator has received 211 complaints of paid news so far and the highest number of complaints were from Peddapalli. Regarding the commissioning of pink ballots, he said: "We can't change the rules just because some party started using pink. Objections should have been raised when the party began using it."