EC seeks Rs 55 cr for Assembly polls

The Election Commission (EC) has written to the Union finance ministry seeking Rs 55 crore for conducting assembly elections in Karnataka.

EC officials, who did not want to be identified, told Business Standard: "As we intend to hold polls in the second or third week of May, we have to work out logistics. We have estimated the poll expenditure to be over Rs 50 crore, so we have requested the Union finance ministry to release Rs 55 crore at the earliest."

The fund sought for the coming elections will be Rs 15 crore more than what was spent during the assembly and Lok Sabha elections in 2004. EC officials explained: "The poll expenditure in 2004 was Rs 40.75 crore. But we expect it to be higher this time as there has been a considerable rise in the input costs including that of fuel for vehicles engaged for election duty."

The EC pegged the estimated poll expenditure at Rs 55 crore after taking into account the money spent on conducting the Chamundeshwari and Ullal assembly by-polls in the state in 2007. The expenditure incurred was around Rs 25 lakh in each of these constituencies.

"There are 224 assembly segments in the state and if the by-poll expenditure is taken as the basis for estimating the fund required for the coming polls, we need around Rs 56 crore. However, we are quite optimistic of completing the poll exercise with a Rs 55 crore budget," officials said.

A total of 600,000 government personnel will be deployed for election duty, of these about 300,000 will be from the state and central police units. The EC has planned to increase the remuneration for these personnel.

On the preparedness for polls before the end of President's Rule on May 28, EC officials said the final draft rolls readied as per the delimited constituencies (redrawn boundaries for assembly segments) will be published on March 29. Following this, the EC head honchos in Delhi will announce the election calendar.

Apart from writing to the finance ministry, the EC has also placed an order with the Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) "" the Bangalore-based defence public sector unit "" to source batteries for the 63,000 electronic voting machines (EVMs) that will be used in the elections.

The EVMs work on a battery powered source. EC officials said: "We have 65,000 EVMs with us. For the coming elections, we need around 45,000 EVMs. As part of the contingency plan, we have decided to get the batteries replaced in 63,000 EVMs." The officials, however, refused to give cost of the batteries. This apart, BEL has also been directed to service all the EVMs before these are sent to the polling stations.