Minister accuses EC if increasing poll expenses

Statesman News Service

MALDA, April 10: The state’s relief minister, Mr Hafiz Alam Sairani, today fired salvos at the Election Commission, imitating the state’s sports minister, Mr Subhas Chakraborty. Mr Sairani alleged that the EC has increased the government’s election expenditure unnecessarily by formulating new guidelines, which is acting as an impediment for the country’s development. “Poor people would not be benefited by this new system,” he said. Mr Sairani argued that the expenditure incurred for conducting elections this time is 300 per cent more compared to that incurred in the last election. The increase in election expenditure is the result of deploying Central forces at the poll booths, more observers and imposition of new systems. He further accused that the EC was “confused” about the system to be adopted for conducting a free and fair election.The minister said that though the EC had announced the “no-Epic-no-vote” system, it formulated a method at last to facilitate people without Epic cards, the minister said. “In North Dinajpur, the administration has spent a lot on advertising development projects such as education for all, health awareness programmes and other welfare programmes. “But for elections, district election officials spent a large chunk of the money to erase these advertisements from walls and remove hoardings. “But the indecorous advertisements of multinational companies remain undisturbed as before,” he said. Noticeably, once the election ends, the government will have to re-spend on advertisement for government-sponsored programmes, Mr Sairani said.“If the EC does not have faith in the present government, they can do everything against the state government in future which will be more dangerous for democracy,” he said. “The appointment of authorities of the EC is a conspiracy in the garb of the present system of election here. I spent nearly Rs two lakh on election expenses in the last Assembly election, but it would be difficult for me to manage the electoral work with the same budget this time due to the adoption of a new style of campaigning as a result of restrictions imposed by the Election Commission,” he said.