Daunting task to achieve clean election goal
- The People's Chronicle Editorial :: December 16, 2021 -

MANIPUR'S chief electoral officer Rajesh Agarwal has been rather exonerative not to categorise all the 60 seats as expenditure sensitive constituencies as it's an open secret that vote-for-cash or vice versa has been the norm in elections held from the grassroots level of governance to electing the state's representatives to the parliament.

It is incomprehensible that all the candidates preparing for the 12th Manipur Legislative Assembly, slated to be conducted in the first quarter of 2022, would be believing that the electors would exercise their franchise rights on the basis of political integrity, educational qualification and sincerity of both incumbent legislators and rookie politicians.

The CEO's disclosure to media persons on Tuesday that Andro, Wangoi, Mayang Imphal, Thanga, Lilong and Churachandpur are expenditure sensitive constituencies wouldn't be impressive to many, especially those who have been following the trend of so-called democratic exercise in the state.

Categorisation of the six assembly constituencies might be on the basis of information culled by the election conducting body regarding higher expenditure incurred by candidates in the last election, seizure of cash, liquor and other items along with activities of candidates but it's known to all that almost all the serious contenders in the remaining 54 assembly segments too spent money well above the permissible limit set by the ECI.

Undisclosed amount spent to woo the voters is one of the reasons why MLAs and MPs implement people-oriented projects only at the fag end of their term.

Thus, regardless of the formation and training of flying squad, static surveillance, video surveillance, video viewing and accounting teams, it is likely that the same old practice of power of money playing a crucial role in deciding fate of the candidates would continue in many elections to come.

Even though fighting parliamentary and state elections has become very expensive, it is also an irony that the Election Commission of India and the major political parties refuse to accept or concede the reality that seeking the people's mandate is becoming an increasingly costly affair.

As ridiculously low levels of election expenses far below the actuals are permitted, it's not surprising that tendency of an elected MP or MLA is to furnish concocted statement of his/her election expenses and then devise various means to recover more than the amount spent to prepare for the next election.

As the public don't expect much from the elected representatives the former's perception is that accepting cash-for-vote is not evil at all, though indiscreetly aiding their legislators to institutionalise corruption.

Not many would argue that it due to corruption, with election as the genesis, that the state has not been able to actually join the race for development in-spite of successive governments claiming their reign have been superior than the predecessors or successors.

Gravity of the situation could also be gauged from the frequent reports and allegations about value of money deciding whether or not one, regardless of their qualifications, lands a government job or contract assignment.

Thus, one can only hope that CEO Rajesh Agrawal's clarion call to the citizens to upload videos and photos to the mobile app cVIGIL for filing complaint against any political party or candidate involved in illegal activities or distribution of money or incurring extra expenditure from the fixed limit would receive positive response from at-least those who believe in free and fair conduct of elections.