EC keeps parties on tenterhooks

The Election Commission's optimism of completing pre-poll work in Karnataka before the end of President's Rule on May 28 has sent the political parties into crisis mode.

Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami, who along with fellow commissioners S Y Quraishi and Naveen B Chawla reviewed the pre-poll work in Bangalore on Tuesday, dropped enough hints of the elections being held on time.

"We are quite satisfied with the election-related work going on in the state. Delimitation of constituencies has been completed in nine districts and we expect the preliminary work to be completed by March 15. The whole exercise of redrawing boundaries and preparing electoral rolls for the new constituencies will be completed by March-end. Everything is proceeding smoothly and on the expected lines," Gopalaswami told reporters.

A total of 5.2 million wrongly-entered names have been deleted from the electoral rolls and 2 million new names added since the revision work was taken up in January, he pointed out.

Apart from interacting with the district deputy commissioners and other officials associated with preparation of electoral rolls, Gopalaswami and his colleagues also received representations from seven political parties on when to hold elections.

While three parties including the Congress have favoured postponement of elections citing discrepancies in preparation of electoral rolls, two parties including the BJP have countered the argument and insisted on timely elections. One party chose to remain silent though.

On the allegation that hurried preparation of the electoral rolls would result in chaos during the polling, Gopalaswami spiked the view stating: "The political parties are only speaking about what we have already done. Confusion about voters' names stemmed from the fact that houses in several localities were either not numbered or had similar numbers. We have corrected the names of such voters. So far, 1 million corrections have been made across the state."

However, Gopalaswami refused to divulge the commission's stand on the exact date of the elections. However, he reiterated the commission's resolve to hold elections within six months of the dissolution of the Assembly by pointing to Rule 24 of the Registration of Electors Rules - 1960, which facilitates the use of existing rolls to the new situation (delimitation of constituencies).

"Though we had announced that the completion of delimitation exercise would take six months, we decided to use Rule 24 in the case of Karnataka. As Rule 24 speaks of urgency, we have decided to remove two stages of poll preparation. One, the completion of the process of issuing electoral photo identity cards and two, inviting objections to the electoral rolls. We will be saving two months each from these stages."

On the political pressure being mounted on the commission to postpone elections, Gopalaswami recounted a court observation which read: Except the acts of God, no act of human beings can stop the conduct of elections. "However, we will go back to Delhi and take a decision after examining the review reports and the representations of the political parties," he added.

With the commission buying time, suspense has heightened for the political parties. The Congress is desperate to get the elections postponed for another six months as it needs time to sort out internal differences before hitting the campaign trail.

In its representation to the EC, the Congress maintained that there were large number of ineligible voters and alleged the door-to-door poll enumeration has not been efficiently.

Demanding elections to be conducted on the basis of accurate electoral rolls, the Congress leaders maintained: "Such a process is likely to take some time. Even if the best possible calculations are in place, elections cannot take place before the last week of May. Two and a half months would be required from March 10 to get the new maps prepared and new rolls finalised. Another one and a half months are required to set the election process in motion. While the ECI is duty bound to conduct elections within the stipulated time frames, the special circumstances prevailing in the state call for elections after May."

The BJP, however, demanded that the Commission not postpone elections. "It is a constitutional obligation to complete elections before the end of the President's Rule,'' BJP state president D V Sadananda Gowda said.

The BJP pointed out that elections to Uttar Pradesh and Orissa assembly were held in 1973-74, just three months after the delimitation exercise was completed. "If polls could be held within a short span in the pre-computer age, it is not a difficult task now," the BJP maintained.

The JD(S), led by former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda, has also favoured holding elections by May 28.