Still unwinding after the mammoth exercise of holding Election-2004 for 670 million voters, Chief Election Commissioner T.S. Krishnamurthy took pot-shots at the political parties saying it was easier to conduct elections in the extremist-prone areas of the country, than to tackle the sporadic violence unleashed by political parties.‘‘Fights among political parties and their group clashes on the day of elections was most difficult to tackle,’’ Krishnamurthy said in an interview on Wednesday. ‘‘A 20-day polling exercise — they said it was too long. But if I have to put paramilitary forces in every constituency for free and fair elections, this is what I had to do.’’Refuting the charge that the decision to countermand the Chapra elections was needlessly delayed, Krishnamurthy shot back, ‘‘You don’t ask the court why a order is delayed! We had to sift through evidence before preparing an order and we work with a very limited number of officials.’’Objecting to the media painting the EC’s Chapra order as anti-Laloo, he said, ‘‘No one bothered to read our order. Both parties were involved in silent rigging.’’But on the definition of ‘‘silent rigging’’, the CEC was evasive: ‘‘We have examined the voters’ register and we found deficiencies. The voting did not take place according to electoral norms. There were deficiencies due to certain steps taken by political parties.’’Krishnamurthy didn’t seem too happy about the allegation that the EC sat on the Lucknow saree stampede case. He said, ‘‘We launched a prosecution against (Lalji) Tandon immediately. We also took prompt action in J-K on the report of intimidation of a voter,’’ he said. However, one issue that seemed to be bothering the CEC was that of missing names. Though he blamed the voters, the candidates and the political parties for waking up only on the day of polling, he said, ‘‘The saving grace is it was limited to the urban and semi-urban areas.’’ The EC will conduct an extensive inquiry and has invited voters to write to it.Krishnamurthy brushed aside allegations of the EC going soft on the ruling coalition, since the Commission took no action on Narendra Modi’s vitriolic personal attacks on Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.‘‘The model code of conduct has no statutory value. If I had to take action, it’d have had to be against all political parties. Then I would have to postpone the elections,’’ he said. ‘‘Is it a mature democracy?’’ he wondered. ‘‘The political parties are more interested in attacking each other than raising issues of governance.’’
