AHMEDABAD: The State Election Commission has for the first time appointed expenditure observers for the local body polls. Senior officials in the commission said that such observers will monitor expenses incurred by candidates fighting corporation, taluka panchayat, and district panchayat elections.
The officials said that the observers will keep a day-to-day account of the expenses of each candidate. The officials said that in Ahmedabad, the treasury officer is being given the responsibility of checking the candidates’ accounts. The officials said that expenditure observers have been deployed for Lok Sabha and assembly elections.
Meanwhile, an RTI activist, Santoshsinh Rathod, has written to the State Election Commission urging it to press all political parties to declare their poll expenses.
He said that no party, including the BJP and the Congress, has given its account of expenditure since the 2012 local body polls. He said that according to election rules, all parties are supposed to declare their expenditure. The Election Commission of India has uploaded the parties’ expenditure for the 2017 state elections. The BJP declared expenditure of Rs 115.02 crore while the Congress declared that it spent Rs 48.97 crore.
Rathod said that he and several other members of the Jagruti Yuva Sewa Samiti met the state election commissioner and requested him to implement the rules on the lines of assembly and Lok Sabha elections. He said that the samiti made a representation on February 1 after which the State Election Commission declared an expenditure limit for candidates.