The Madras High Court on Monday recorded the observation of Election Commission that it had put in place unprecedented arrangements to curb electoral crimes in the R.K. Nagar Assembly constituency, slated to go for bypoll on Thursday. It hoped that the commission would prevent with an iron hand the illegal practice of bribing voters and ensure free and fair elections.
Referring to large-scale bribing of voters, which led to rescinding the bypoll notification for the constituency in April, Justice K. Ravichandrabaabu said: “Needless to say that, in this case, the phrase 'once bitten, twice shy,' is squarely applicable to the Central Election Commission.” The observations were made while disposing of a writ petition filed by DMK candidate N. Marudhu Ganesh.
Senior Counsel P. Wilson, representing the petitioner, urged the court to order installation of closed-circuit television cameras in every street in the constituency to keep a check on distribution of money to voters. He called for increasing the central paramilitary forces substantially since there were chances of incidents, such as booth capturing.
Surveillance measures
Additional Solicitor General G. Rajagopalan said that it would not be possible to instal CCTV cameras in every street. He, however, pointed out that the ECI had 225 surveillance cameras in major streets and junctions in the constituency to record the movement of vehicles and undesirable elements.
“Such cameras are never deployed in any election. As a special measure, 225 cameras are deployed here,” he said.
The ASG submitted a brief note stating that 36 flying squad teams, 15 static surveillance teams, 20 video surveillance teams and 36 check point duty teams had been deployed as on December 4. It stated that the vehicles used by the teams had been fitted with GPS devices to track their movement from a central control room and they had been fitted with cameras to monitor the way officials handled complaints.
“Considering a large number of complaints, apart from deployment of these teams, as a first time measure, 50 mobile parties on two wheelers are additionally deployed. Each team consists of one Micro Observer along with one police personnel. Further, 15 companies of the Central Armed Police Force are being deployed for area domination and confidence building among voters to ensure free, fair and inducement free election,” the note read.
Seven senior observers, the highest in the country, had been deputed in the constituency.
The court was informed, further, that web casting had been ordered to be done from all 258 polling stations on Thursday. More than a dozen Income Tax officials were assigned duty to attend to the complaints of storage or distribution of money and sales tax officials too were verifying sale of goods through tokens.
“The mobile phone top-up of prepaid plans, newspaper agents and milk vendors are also monitored to prevent misuse of such channels,” the note stated.
