The Hindu : Even indictments do not shame politicians: CEC

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Mar 06, 2003

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Even indictments do not shame politicians: CEC

By J. Venkatesan

NEW DELHI March 5. The Chief Election Commissioner, J. M. Lyngdoh, today said that "very serious instructions'' would be issued to the State Governments which violated the Model Code of Conduct during elections and byelections.

Mr. Lyngdoh was replying to a question on the effect of the Commission's indictment of the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, for violating the code during the recent byelection to the Sattankulam constituency. Ms. Jayalalithaa allegedly made various promises to the electorate.

Mr. Lyngdoh agreed that the Commission was helpless in this regard. "We are relentlessly working on how to deal with such situations. We will come out with very serious instructions soon,'' he told journalists after inaugurating the seventh international meeting of inter-governmental electoral management bodies in the capital.

Mr. Lyngodh regretted that even indictments did not make politicians feel "ashamed." "We are supposed to be in a civilised democracy wherein we deal with politicians with some repute... if in such an open society, people of such sort do not feel ashamed for what they have done, we are helpless.'' On the steps the Commission proposed to take for preventing the manipulation of electoral rolls across the country, Mr. Lyngodh said various steps, including displaying of voter lists on the Internet, were being contemplated.

Voicing concern over the increase in the manipulation of electoral rolls, he said "it is generally attributed to the government of the day." Thousands of names were deleted from the rolls for apparently no reason. This was because there was electoral revision every year and it was not possible for the Commission to monitor the process everywhere.

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