State Election Commission, Jharkhand on Friday took a review meeting for preparedness of Panchayat bypolls in the State. According to the commission, there are 1,628 seats vacant at Panchayat level. The vacancy has been created by a number of reasons including sudden death or resignation of a sitting member and illegibility of many others.
In a meeting attended by all District Electoral Officers of the state, the State Election Commissioner, Shiv Basant made it clear to all officials to get expenditure records of candidates filed properly. He said, “This is mandatory even for an illegible declared candidate. They will be barred from participating in election for next three years if they fail to do so.”
The State Election Commissioner said that the commission is trying to conduct Panchayat bypolls anytime between September-November this year. He said that the updated voter list till January this year has been released by Election Commission of India, and good thing is that it is error-free.
Though Basant claimed of getting excellent support and co-ordination from district level officials of the state and police as a whole in past panchayat election conducted in November last year, an offcial present in the meeting said that there were a number of things to be done, which are still pending.
He said that Basant directed all officials to speed up pre-election processes to make coming election successful like the earlier one. He also took a strong note of those district level officials, who have failed to dispose post-election processes even after six months of the Panchayat polls.
Asked about this, Basant said that these were minor and internal issues, better to be neglected if one wanted to take the account of how turn-out percentage of polling has been increasing poll-after-poll. He said that thinking of up to 74 per cent turn-out at so many parts of the state, especially in naxal-infested areas was something not only overwhelming, but was also beyond any prediction until as recently as some year ago.