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Tuesday, May 18, 2004

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National

14th Lok Sabha constituted

By J. Venkatesan

NEW DELHI, MAY 17. The Election Commission today issued a notification constituting the 14th Lok Sabha, under Section 73 of the Representation of the People Act.

The Chief Election Commissioner, T.S. Krishnamurthy, and the two Commissioners, B.B. Tandon and N. Gopalaswamy, met the President this morning and handed over a list of 539 members of the new Lok Sabha to enable him to initiate the process of forming a new government. Of the 543 constituencies, re-polling has been ordered in four. The election process began on February 29 and was held in four phases.

Briefing reporters before meeting the President, the CEC thanked the Centre, the State Governments, observers, special observers, election officers, presiding officers, police and other security agencies and the media for helping the Commission conduct a relatively peaceful and free and fair elections. He said the overall poll percentage was 57.86, compared to 59.99 in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections.

The CEC said only 44 of the 539 elected members were women. The Commission had written to the government about the need for providing adequate representation to women. On criminalisation of politics, the CEC said there was a need to bar persons who were chargesheeted for offences punishable with imprisonment for five years and more from contesting elections. "The Commission hopes that the Government will take electoral reforms as priority number one." On missing names in electoral rolls, he said the Commission would make use of modern technology to ensure reasonable accuracy. He rejected the criticism of certain political parties about the ``neutrality'' of the electronic voting machines and said that the parties that complained had made substantial winning strides.

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