EC mulls village-level panels for preventing bribing of voters

CHENNAI: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has released a document titled “Experiences & Lessons Learnt from the Poll gone States 2016”, and suggested stringent measures to be adopted to monitor election expenditure and distribution of cash for voters. The ECI has also suggested forming village level committees to prevent cash distribution and launching a mobile application for monitoring liquor sales. 

The Commission further plans to deploy 25 flying squad teams in every constituency, seven days prior to the polls. It has called for posting Income Tax sleuths in all districts and delegating them investigative powers. Though Assam, West Bengal, Kerala and Puducherry also faced elections in 2016, the ECI has released suggestions based on complaints and observations of election officials in Tamil Nadu, revealed the official document.

Referring to some malpractices in Tamil Nadu polling stations in 2016, the ECI noted that web steaming of polling stations alone is not sufficient. A software application to red flag undesirable events like black outs and crowd gathering, should be implemented. Official sources from ECI said that the document was prepared based on election officials’ feedback.

“It is too early to predict whether the ECI will implement all the suggestions for the upcoming elections. However, expenditure monitoring will be enhanced to prevent cash distribution,” said a senior official. 
It may be recalled that after allegations of cash distribution surfaced, Assembly elections in Aravakurichi and Thanjavur were postponed in 2016.

Suggestions based on 2016 polling in TN

• Online IP camera based monitoring of liqour distilleries should be enforced
• Village level vigilance committee should be formed to prevent cash distribution
• Number of flying quad teams should be increased to 25 per constituency seven days before polling
• Flying Squad Teams and Static Surveillance Teams should be monitored through GPS system
• Complaints from multiple channels should be registered in a single portal, which will trigger SMS alerts to respective flying squad teams  
• Web steaming of polling stations not sufficient. Software needed to red flag any undesirable events