After ensuring peaceful conduct of elections to State Legislative Assembly without a single untoward incident reported on or before the polling date, the State election authority, the Chief Electoral Officer’s office, has now focussed attention on scrutinising reports on election expenditure incurred by the contesting candidates.
Accordingly, three-member teams comprising the district election officer, returning officer and expenditure observer/micro observer deputed to each district will start scrutinising the election expenditure reports incurred by the contesting candidates in their respective jurisdiction from January 5. The team would prepare reports of the winning and losing candidates constituency wise and these reports would be reconciled with the election expenditure reports submitted by the candidates in their respective districts.
Disqualification
The exercise assumes significance as the Election Commission had recently disqualified 47 candidates, a majority of 30 from Mahabubnagar district, from contesting in the elections for a period of five years for not submitting the final reports on the election expenditure incurred by them. The State Election Commission on its part disqualified over 12,700 candidates for not submitting the same, making them ineligible to contest local body elections for three years.
Senior officials told The Hindu that the Election Commission was expected to receive election expenditure reports from the contesting candidates within 30 days from the day of counting of votes.
Mandatory
This would make it mandatory for the candidates to submit their reports before January 10 as the counting of votes and declaration of results was completed on December 11.
“Candidates will have an opportunity to represent to the respective authorities discrepancies if any in the preparation of election expenditure reports and get them rectified. But they are expected to do it within the stipulated time,” an official said.