The Election Commission of India will ensure all measures for a free, fair, transparent, zero violence and inducement-free election to Tripura Assembly, said Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar said here on Thursday in a press conference. He was flanked by his two other colleagues Election Commissioners Anup Chandra Pandey and Arun Goel and other senior officials.
“If anyone, including the officials found to be negligent to follow the Commission’s guidelines and instructions, he would face appropriate actions”.
“ We are duty bound to hold a free and fair elections and we shall do it”, he said and then gave details of the steps the ECI would take for elderly voters, Divyanga voters and others who would require any assistance at any point of time in the polling booths. He also assured adequate security arrangements.
A three-tier security would be put in place where the EVM and other poll materials would be stored. Similar security blankets would also be given in polling stations with the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF).
“It’s the most important festival of democracy”, he said.
The CEC also told the media that there would be facilities to lodge complaint by the electors if they so felt was necessary.
“Anyone, including the voter, can lodge complaint with the commission through the cVIGIL app launched by the poll panel. “Through the cVIGIL app, the Commission deals with any complaint on a fast-track basis within 100 minutes. The cVIGIL is an innovative mobile application for citizens to report about the violation of Model Code of Conduct and expenditure during the elections. The cVIGIL stands for Vigilant Citizen and emphasises the proactive and responsible role citizens can play in the conduct of free and fair elections”, Kumar said.
The uniqueness of the app is that it only allows live photo and video with auto location capture from within the app to ensure digital evidence for flying squads to act upon in a time-bound manner, he added.
The CEC also maintained that all political parties and candidates will have to publish criminal antecedents of their candidates at least three times in newspapers, television channels and on their websites.
“People must know the background of all candidates before the election,” he said.
In an attempt to ensure inducement-free polls , the CEC said that instructions had already been given to the Banks and the Reserve Bank of India regarding huge and bulk transactions of money. Besides, appropriate monitoring arrangements would be put in place about the functioning of social media. The state and central agencies would also monitor the activities.
The CEC also pointed out that to make all the process of the election, randomisation of use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), deployment of polling personnel, official and the security forces would be done in presence of the Central Observers and senior officials concerned.
“The CEC said that micro observers would be deployed in all the polling stations and would be the central government officials only” he added.
The ECI team also distributed voter cards to new voters in a function.
Earlier they held a high level poll preparedness review with Chief Secretary J K Sinha, DGP Amitabh Ranjan and other senior officials from District levels. On Wednesday they had met the political parties and other concerned officials.
The full commission and the accompanied officials on Thursday afternoon left for poll-bound Meghalaya.
From Meghalaya, the full EC would go to another poll-bound state Nagaland on January 13 and would return to Delhi on January 15.
After returning to Delhi, the Election Commission would likely announce the schedule of the election in these three states.
