Video-tracking teams to checkposts, EC ready to tackle money & muscle power in Karnataka assembly polls

BENGALURU: As the campaigning phase is set to begin in a full-fledged way from Friday, ostentatious display of wealth, money and muscle power is expected to raise its ugly head. With more than 40% of the electorate expressing concerns over the use of money and muscle power in polls, Election Commission of India has scaled up security in an unprecedented way to curb the practice.
Apart from increasing security by 25-30%, ECI has drawn up meticulous plans to track every candidate and party events, held physically as well as digitally.

Along with regular static and mobile teams, ECI has deployed video surveillance teams (VSTs) for 24x7 recording of candidates’ campaign activities and teams to analyse the video content generated by VSTs to ascertain excess spending or crack down on freebie/money distribution.
"Any activity missed by the static teams would be recorded and flagged by video viewing teams (VVTs). Even if we miss out on anything offline, digital verification will catch candidates indulging in misuse of money and muscle power," explained K Venkatesh Kumar, additional chief electoral officer, Karnataka.
According to Venkatesh, all vehicles will be stopped. It will take a maximum of two minutes to examine a vehicle and if bags or suspicious boxes are found, the search may continue for 5-10 minutes. Asked whether this would cause unnecessary traffic snarls, Venkatesh said, “No vehicle will be spared. But given the ground reality, local enforcement officials will decide which vehicles have to be stopped. If we spend two minutes checking each car, it will result in massive jams, and hence officials will pick and stop vehicles based on intelligence inputs and intuition. There is no guarantee that money/goods are transported only in swanky SUVs or sedans. We have seized materials in goods autos and tempos as well.”