Constitutional experts on Saturday attacked Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami's decision to suo motu recommend removal of Navin Chawla as Election Commissioner, saying the move has created a 'crisis' and its timing just ahead of the elections could make people believe there is 'some motivation'.
"Our electoral rolls revised according to the newly delimited constituencies will be ready by August 31," the CEC told reporters when asked whether the commission was ready to conduct Lok Sabha elections as per the redrawn constituencies.
Actor-turned-politician Chiranjeevi on Monday virtually ruled out having any alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party in the state elections, asserting that his newly floated Praja Rajyam is a secular party."We will not align with them because ours is a secular party," he told reporters. Observing that options are open for talking to all secular parties, he said that a decision would be taken only after the elections are announced.
Actor-turned-politician Chiranjeevi met Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswamy in New Delhi on Monday to seek a common symbol for his party Praja Rajyam. Chiranjeevi, who was accompanied by former union minister P Shivshankar, submitted a memorandum to the Election Commission, requesting that the rules for issuing a common symbol be amended. As per the EC's rules, a regional political party needs to secure six per cent of the votes and two elected representatives.
"The Lok Sabha elections are likely to be held between mid-April and mid-May. We have no particular interest in advancing it unless there is an absolutely great need for that," Gopalaswami said.
After a split opinion, the Election Commission on Friday served a notice on the Congress President Sonia Gandhi on a disqualification complaint against her for receiving a Belgian honour, triggering a political row.
In an exclusive chat, N Gopalaswami says how the Election Commission ensured a smooth, trouble-free election in Gujarat.
UNITES, the union that represents workers in the IT and ITeS sector in India, has requested the CEC to invoke the model code of conduct to stall the whole process citing the scandal-hit company's legal liabilities and other ambiguities as deterrents for any potential bidder to carry an effective due diligence process. Over 2,000 Satyam employees, claims UNITES, have registered with the union since the scandal was reported on January 7 this year.
N Gopalaswamy, chief election commissioner who lays down his office on March 20, said that EC would need more security forces to ensure that elections could be held in free and free manner.
The newly appointed Director General of Police of Maharashtra S S Virk, who was once removed by the Election Commission as Punjab police chief, will be kept off election duty, the central poll body said on Sunday.
The Deputy Election Commissioners have drawn up three different sets of the tentative schedule in consultation with the states' chief election officers. One provides for the polling on April 20, 26, May 5 and 10, but the finality will come only after the full bench of the Election Commission sits down to consider all aspects and fixes the schedule, the EC sources said.
Congress wants single-phase polls while BJP prefers multi-phase polls
If Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami lives by the rulebook, so does his colleague Navin Chawla. Only that the book is written by him and the rules are his own.
N Gopalaswamy said the number of political parties increased manifold after 2003 because of tax exemptions
Polls for assembly constitutencies will begin with the first phase beginning on November 17 and the seventh and last phase of election on December 24.
A title given to Congress President Sonia Gandhi during her visit to Belgium in 2006 has become a matter of controversy, with the Election Commission on Monday deliberating on a complaint seeking her disqualification as Lok Sabha MP over it.
"We have submitted a petition to the CEC as per the directions of the Supreme Court seeking removal of Navin Chawla, as he has been favouring a particular party in his decisions," Arun Jaitley said.
In a move to track down mischievous messages during campaigning, the Election Commission on Friday banned, for the first time, the use of Short Messaging Service by candidates 48 hours before polling for the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh assemblies.
Congress has been in political wilderness since the past 17 years in the state, also considered as BJP's Hindutva laboratory. While Chief Minister Narendra Modi is the star campaigner for BJP and the party's chief ministerial candidate, Congress has refrained from projecting anyone for the top post to avoid internal wrangling.
Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami said the Commission is "open" to the request of Himachal Pradesh School Examination Board Chairmain B R Rahi for advancing the poll in view of the Board's decision to hold examinations from December 4 to December 20.
Chief Elections Commissioner N Gopalaswami and Election Commissioners Navin Chawla and S Y Qureshi will meet representatives of six main political parties later in the day.
Himachal Pradesh will also go to polls on November 11 and December 12.
This was announced by CEC N Gopalaswamy.
Taking serious note of the discrepancies, Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami told a press conference in Bangalore that it has been decided to delete 33.48 lakh entries and add 9.27 lakh new ones. Gopalswami, who reviewed the electoral rolls and the state's preparedness to hold the polls along with Election Commissioners Naveen Chawla and S Y Quraishi, said work on revision of the rolls was not satisfactory.
Gopalaswami also said that more paramilitary forces will be deployed at polling booths in Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Baghpat and Saharanpur.
The elections will be conducted in seven stages.
52 lakh voters were deleted and 48 lakh were added in Uttar Pradesh's electoral rolls.
Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami said that the election shall be held in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of a single transferable vote and the voting would be by secret ballot.
All pending petitions will be cleared in keeping with the bill.
The chief election commissioner also said he did not see an early evolution of a two-party system in the country, saying the idea favoured by Kalam is "too difficult at this stage".
According to the CEC, while Tripura will go to polls on February 23, the elections in Meghalaya will be held on March 3 and in Nagaland on March 5. The elections in all the three states will be held in a single phase and electronic voting machines will be used this year. While counting of votes for Tripura and Meghalaya is scheduled to be held on March 7, in Nagaland, the counting will take place a day later.
The Delimitation Commission, Gopalaswami said, will submit its final recommendations in two months and this will come into force after the presidential notification.
"You can do your calculations," the CEC said when asked whether the poll schedule for UP will be announced before the completion of assembly poll process in Manipur, Punjab and Uttaranchal.
The CEC, who was in the state last week to oversee the poll arrangements, said sufficient number of central paramilitary forces would be available to ensure free and fair polls.
Counting in all these states will be on February 27.
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