Chandigarh, December 27: The implications of paid news are serious and interfere in the conduct of free and fair elections, and the Election Commission will issue new guidelines to check “money power”, chief election commissioner SY Quraishi said today.
“The implications of this [paid news] are serious,” Quraishi told reporters here. “It is deceiving people and there is a deceit element in this, which interferes in [the conduct of] free and fair elections… we are examining legal implications.”
The CEC’s comments came in the wake of the recently held Bihar elections. He said that though these polls were conducted in a peaceful manner like never before in the country, still the story of the polls was not over yet.
He said the Election Commission had given 86 notices to candidates in the Bihar polls with regard to paid news, adding that lessons learnt in these elections would be implemented in future elections.
Quraishi said the Election Commission had set up an expenditure
monitoring division and the campaign to check the use of money power in elections would continue.
“New guidelines would be issued under the campaign to check [the use of] money power,” he said.
“In the Bihar polls, we had at our disposal various agencies, including income-tax machinery, had video surveillance including at airports and railway stations, conducted surprise raids, candidates were to give details of their expenditure and maintain accounts,” he explained.
“We confronted the contesting candidates with proof and questioned them how same content had appeared as news item in various newspapers. Many owned up.”
Quraishi said the commission’s campaign against money power and to curb the menace of paid news would be stronger in the states which go to the polls in 2011, including Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.
He was speaking at the inauguration of a three-day diamond jubilee photo exhibition on ‘India and Elections’ at the Government Museum Art Gallery here.
He said that for the first time, National Voter’s Day would be celebrated on January 25 next year.
All those who are aged 18 or above as of January 1, 2011, would be issued voter identity cards, he said, and appealed to the youth to understand their power as a voter and exercise their right.
The CEC said that every week at least two delegations from abroad visit the commission to study India’s electoral system. “There is great faith and credibility in our election system,” he said.
Quraishi said India had 71 crore eligible voters in the last general elections, which was more than the number of voters of Europe, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and Canada put together and also more than the 54 African countries put together.
–Agencies