A day after results of elections to five state assemblies were declared, Chief Election Commissioner B B Tandon on Friday strongly criticised both the major alliances of Tamil Nadu for having indulged in a "competitive offer of freebies" to voters.
"What happened in Tamil Nadu during the recent assembly elections was a competitive offer of freebies from both sides, which cannot be justified at all. It was totally against political propriety," Tandon, who would be demitting office on June 29, told a BBC Hindi programme.
"Your political intentions of offerings for the development of a state should be mentioned in your manifesto, which could also include some of the sops or freebies. But in Tamil Nadu the announcement of the freebies after the manifestoes had been released was beyond justification," he said.
Asked why the Election Commission did not intervene and pull up the political parties responsible for this, the CEC said: "It is the duty of political parties to follow the political code in a democracy. They should behave responsibly during elections. I think it would not be right for the Election Commission to take harsh measures every time or to suggest framing of new and tough laws."
Asked about the anger of Left parties against the Election Commission due to deletion of names from voters' lists in West Bengal, Tandon said: "In West Bengal around 25 lakh names were deleted and almost the same number of names were added to the electoral rolls. May be some errors may have been made in this huge exercise, as this work has to be completed on time. At times, the staff is negligent due to being in a hurry and may be malafide at times also.
"At this juncture all I can say is that if names of any genuine voters were left out of electoral rolls, it was unfortunate. The Election Commission would inquire into all complaints it would receive, and strict action would be taken against officials who would be found guilty," the CEC said.
Asked about the growing criticism of political parties against the poll panel, Tandon said, "Any new initiative taken by the EC is the reason for complaints by political parties. If any change takes place, it makes some parties sad or unhappy and they begin to attack us. Though it is strange that a particular party which criticises the commission's initiative in one state, welcomes it in another. Therefore this criticism does not put us on the back foot, despite repeated attempts. We are satisfied with the elections in these five assemblies, elections to which were incident free and the number of complaints has been very low."
The CEC also said that a lot of improvement is required in the country's election process.
"Election Commission had sent a set of 22 proposals to the central government, suggesting widespread electoral reforms. It is a matter of concern, that despite our proposals having been sent quite some time back, there has been no progress. We hope that soon we would be hearing something on the electoral reforms," he said.
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