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Supreme Court to hear EC plea on opinion polls tomorrow

The Supreme Court will hear tomorrow an application filed by the Election Commission seeking interim directions to the Union of India and others to enforce its guidelines banning publication and dissemination of opinion polls and exit polls 48 hours before the day of polling.

The application has been filed in connection with a pending writ petition in the apex court on the subject.

The hearing was fixed by a bench of Justice S B Majmudar and Justice U C Bannerjee.

It may be noted that the EC guidelines dated August 20, 1999, banning publication and dissemination of opinion and exit polls from September 3 to October 3 have been stayed by the Andhra Pradesh and Madras high courts.

However, the EC application does not make any reference to this.

Meanwhile, answering questions at a press conference in Thiruvananthapuram, Chief Election Commissioner Dr M S Gill said that if the feeling among some parties that the Commission was ''overstepping its limits'' on many issues was related to the code of conduct enforced by the Commission it was an agreement reached by all political parties. The essence of the code was that parties in power should not make use of that power to gain political advantage. There were also some parties with immense resources and others that did not not have them. It was essential that there was a level playing ground, he added.

Dr Gill expressed satisfaction over the conduct of the first phase of polling on September 5 and said the fact that repoll had to be ordered in only 184 of the 178,000- odd polling stations in various parts of the country was ''an indication that the situation was under good control during the polling.''

UNI

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