Did BJP play by code or not?

Gautam declared that he has sent a detailed report to the chief electoral officer mentioning that around 60 vehicles were used by the party for its convoy violating the code of conduct. As per rules, only three vehicles are permitted in a convoy during the enforcement of the conduct while the party members insisted that the rules would not apply here since this was a rally. The report is awaiting clarification from the Chief Election Commissioner. Gautam was delivering a talk on “All you should know about elections” organised by the National Society for Clean Cities, Pune Branch at the Alpa Bachat Bhavan here today.

“Implementing the law is always unpleasant,” he said and dwelt at length on the various aspects of elections. In spite of all its complexities, India commands the respect of the world for retaining democratic character, he said, citing the example of Cambodia and South Africa where Indians were invited as observers to oversee the smooth conduct of their first elections.

The district collector said while the country had succeeded on a number of fronts in the past five decades, the nation had failed to make citizens out of people. “We have created a big crowd of clients who have little sense of responsibility,” he said.

Vijay Kumar Gautam called for the participation of the citizens to ensure that the directives of the Election Commissioner are followed both in letter and spirit. He cited the instance of the Defacement of Property Act which prohibits defacing walls belonging to both private and public property and facing public view. More than 90 cases have been registered with the collectorate so far, he said.

“Inform us if you feel that the candidate is throwing money,” he urged, exhorting the people to remain alert even in cases of distribution of pamphlets since this would help the officials to maintain tabs on the expenditure.

A special counselling centre will be begin functioning from August 17 to enable citizens to find out if they were on the electoral roll. Forms will be available till the last date of filing nominations. A CD-ROM on the voterlist is expected to be ready in a couple of days. More than 80 per cent of the voter ID cards have been completed in Maharashtra. Although tenders have been finalised, the process of completing the remaining 20 per cent ID voter cards will begin from mid October, Gautam said.

Status of your pleas
In the first step towards decentralising the administration process, the district collectorate will sport a touch screen system from August 15. Designed by the Mahindra British Telecom, this system enables citizens to find out the status of their applications filed at the tehsil offices. More than 110 various kinds of permissions, licences and “no-objection certificates” required by citizens have been listed with the district collectorate.

The district collector claimed that more than 99.95 per cent of the total of 4 lakh applications filed since August last year have been disposed of. He is now seeking the assistance of cable operators and cyber cafes to promote this concept in the city.