The much-awaited schedule for the Lok Sabha elections is likely to be announced on Monday afternoon.
The CEC's letter to the President recommending Chawla's removal is just two pages long while he has dealt with 12 specific cases of partisanship in another 24 pages and annexed more than 800 pages of the Election Commission minutes, internal correspondence, etc in support of the case he has built up.
With Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami recommending the removal of his colleague Navin Chawla, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday demanded "firm action" on the issue saying the "credibility" of the poll panel is "at stake".
The Election Commission on Wednesday issued notice to Petroleum Minister Murli Deora for his remarks on effecting a fuel price cut after the conclusion of assembly elections next month. The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party had approached Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami over the issue contending that the announcement amounted to violation of the Model Code of Conduct enforced by the commission.
At the conclusion of the two-day visit to the state to review the poll arrangements along with the two election commissioners, Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswamy said, "More staff is required because the state is having concurrent elections to the assembly and the polls.
This demand was put forward by the party delegations, which separately called on Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami, who is in the state capital to review the poll preparations. The two major parties in the state, Communist Party of India-Marxist and the Congress, however, did not make this demand.
The Centre has appointed Navin Chawla as chief election commissioner with effect from April 21, 2009.
Gearing up the machinery ahead of the general elections, the full Election Commission will visit Uttar Pradesh and Bihar this week to review the poll readiness in these two key states in the Hindi heartland which together accounts for 120 seats.
Taking a serious note of the flow of unaccounted money during polls, the Election Commission on Monday said it would deploy income tax experts to track expenses of candidates."A cell comprising experts drawn from the Income Tax Department will be set up in the Commission to deal with information on poll expenses of candidates," Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami said at a press conference.He said the EC was highly concerned over the illegal use of money power.
The Election Commission is all set to announce the schedule for the Lok Sabha elections after having elicited views of Union Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta on Tuesday on the security scenario and those of political parties.
The Congress on Wednesday accused Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami of being favourable to the Bharatiya Janata Party and cited two incidents -- the CD case and distribution of sarees during a rally -- to buttress its point. "For three years, the BJP has accused Election Commissioner Navin Chawla of supporting the Congress. The Congress has rejected it several times. Now, we would like to point out how the CEC has been favourable to the BJP," said a Cong leader.
However, there is no official word on the status of the controversial recommendation of the CEC for the removal of Election Commissioner Navin Chawla, though Law Minister H R Bhardwaj has rejected it and had indicated that Chawla will be the next CEC.
According to the book, 'Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries Who Got Away With War Crimes', authored by UK-based investigative journalist Phil Miller India's secret use of British mercenaries lasted for four months after the Indo-Lanka accord was signed between former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and then Sri Lankan president Junius Jayewardene in 1987.
Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswamy has convened an all-party-meeting at 1000 hrs on Tuesday, to take note of the views of the political parties so that the commission can make a decision on the dates for the Lok Sabha elections.
"The BJP is totally opposed to the extension of President's Rule in Karnataka, based on specious procedural grounds of the commission not being in a position to complete the procedural work. We earnestly hope the commission will rise to the occasion and find administrative solutions for resolving this problem," BJP leader Yashwant Sinha said.
For the sake of neutrality of the Chief Election Commissioners and Election Commissioners, CEC N Gopalaswami wants a bar on their joining any political party for ten years after retirement or taking up any government post. In a three-page note to President Pratibha Patil sent on January 16 when he separately recommended removal of Election Commissioner Navin Chawla, he has sought amendment in the Election Commission Act for the purpose.
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'.
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.
'Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai? Don't you believe it. I don't trust the Chinese one bit,' Nehru told Gopalaswamy Parthasarathi before he traveled to China as India's ambassador. Asking GP to be ever vigilant, Nehru advised the diplomat to send telegrams on important matters only to him. Many such anecdotes from a long and eventful career as diplomat and bureaucrat crowd the pages of GP: 1912-1995, discovers Uttaran Das Gupta.
"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.
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 Election Commission has started deliberations with national and regional political parties to finalise the date for the Jammu and Kashmir assembly elections.The Left parties, led by the Communist Party of India, was one of the parties that presented its case before the EC team comprising Chief Election commissioner N S Gopalaswamy, Nawin Chawla and S Y Qureshi.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Congress wants single-phase polls while BJP prefers multi-phase polls
N Gopalaswamy said the number of political parties increased manifold after 2003 because of tax exemptions
Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami is a stickler. For rules. For details. For discipline. For principles. For values. For him, there is only one way of doing things: The right way. He is known to make copious notes about how every hour of his day passes. "He jots down details in a tiny diary. Even if you speak to him on the phone for a few minutes, your name and details of the conversation go into that tiny diary," revealed a friend who has known the CEC for 20 years.
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.
'With the Election Commission wisening up to the practice, which strikes at the very root of electoral democracy, the practitioners of cash for votes have been getting more and more ingenious,' points out Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
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.
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