20 to 40 percent legislators have criminal records says embarrassed Chief Election Commissioner
March 23rd, 2011 - 2:49 pm ICT by ANIKolkata, Mar.23 (ANI): Ahead of the upcoming assembly elections in different parts of India, Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi has said that legislators with criminal records are a cause of grave concern and embarrassment for his department.
Speaking to the media in Kolkata, Quraishi said: ” When the same people who look upon us with admiration and ask us about legislators with criminal backgrounds, it becomes very embarrassing.”
” The people know that 25 to 40 percent of all legislators have a criminal background. So it becomes very difficult for us to justify how such a situation is allowed to continue,” he added.
Quraishi also informed the media about the new guidelines enforced by the Election Commission to check the usage of funds during the polls.
He said: ” Every candidate has to open a new bank account from which he will incur expenditure on his election, so that monitoring is easy. If he draws form ten accounts, it becomes very difficult to know what is happening.”
” We will have an expenditure observer and an assistant expenditure observer all over the State in all the constituencies. Flying squads equipped with video recorders that go around monitoring public meetings, rallies and every other action are also available,” he added.
In the past, political scientists and the media have regularly brought up issues of large scale uncontrolled expenditure by candidates on campaigning, and other methods used by them to influence voters. (ANI)
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