Poll panel seeks law to regulate exit polls

MANDATE 2004

The Election Commission has said that it would seek legislative powers to regulate exit polls when the new government assumes office.

"After the elections, we will like to tell the government that they should consider a proper legislative support for this purpose," Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) TS Krishnamurthy told reporters yesterday.

He also said the tendency of political parties to find loopholes in the model code of conduct made it difficult for the commission to examine all such complaints when conducting such a large electoral exercise.

The CEC was responding to the recent controversy on the issue of exit and opinion polls and surrogate advertisements on the electronic media. Krishnamurthy also said the commission had already received legal opinion on the subject, which makes it clear that it must have proper powers to enforce any regulation.

He said there was a possibility that some voters, especially the uneducated ones, may be confused by these exit polls, particularly when there is a prolonged spell of voting like the present four-phase polls.

The CEC on Wednesday made an inspection of the facilities set up by the Press Information Bureau to transmit the general election results rapidly.

He said they had received no response to a suggestion made by the Election Commission that a candidate against whom criminal charges have been framed by a court of competent jurisdiction for an offense punishable with five years or more should be disqualified from contesting.

He said political parties have been hesitant to accept such a proposal as they feel that false cases just before elections could be foisted on candidates to seek a bar on them. He added that the issue was now before the Supreme Court and the commission's views would be put before it.

Krishnamurthy explained that the polls had to be spread out in four phases lasting three weeks, keeping in view the availability of central para military forces. "We have had maximum number of forces in this election provided by the union home ministry".

He added that if additional para military forces were made available the phases could have been reduced. "Ideally, one would like to have a one day poll but that is not possible", he added.

The Commission also apportioned part of the blame for the missing names in the electoral rolls on the state governments. The CEC said in a mammoth exercise involving 670 million voters, one cannot depend only on the commission which, in turn, depends on state government officials.

He assured that such complaints would decrease in future as they were providing electoral rolls on the website now, besides encouraging voters to file relevant forms for inclusion of their names electronically. In addition the postal department was also being roped in to update the list.