It is 8 a.m. and Harbhajan Singh has just reached Hamza,a village in Amritsar district thats part of Majitha constituency,which goes to the polls on January 30. Singh,a Sub Divisional Officer (SDO) in the Amritsar Municipal Corporation,is here as head of a video surveillance team deployed by the Election Commission. On Thursday,he had set off early in the morning from Amritsar,accompanied by his driver Prem Singh and cameraman Harjeet Singh. He didnt heed to warnings about the fog he would encounterhe simply had to be there before Bikram Majithia,SAD candidate from Makitha and Youth Akali Dal president,reaches Hamza for his first election rally of the day. With the Election Commission issuing stringent guidelines and monitoring the poll expenditure of the candidates,some of the flamboyance that accompanies elections in Punjab is missing this year. There arent many hoardings and banners and candidates come in smaller convoys for their election rallies. Also missing are the endless plates of pakoras and chai that does the round at election meetings. Candidates are even careful about the number of chairs they hire for these meetings. Surveillance teams like that of Singhs mark all of these as the candidates poll expenditure. Singh reaches the venue of the poll meeting. Majithia and his convoy are yet to reach,so Singh counts the chairs. He takes out his notepad and writes,50 chairs. A few minutes later,Majithias supporters work themselves into a frenzy as they see his convoy approaching. Singh jots down down the number of vehicles in the cavalcade and make a note of the vehicle thats moving ahead of the convoyit has two speakers mounted on the roof. Harjeet,the cameraman with Singh,videographs all the activity. The video recording will be submitted to the ECs Video Viewing Committee that will compare the expenses incurred with the permissible limit, says Singh. As Majithia winds up his speech,Singh and his team leave for Athwal village to repeat the exercise. Besides Athwal,he has nine other villages to cover today. Singh has to get to each of Majithias poll venues before he does. After repeating the exercise at Kotla Majha Singh and Kotla Sultan Singh villages,Singh is on his way to Borewal Kang village. On his way to the venue,in his car,he makes a note of the time when the video started,the time it ended and the total length of the video in a special sheet called Annexure 7. Its noon as Singh reaches the campaign venue at Borewal Kang. One of the men at the venue says,Kharche paun waale aa gaye,kursian ginan waale aa gaye (They have come to come to count chairs and the money spent). We know they laugh at us,but we just do our work, says Singh. After the Borewal Kang meeting,Singh and his team open their lunch boxesSingh has packed in some aloo mattar and chapaatis. Burj Nau Abad village is the next stop. Here,the chairs at the venue are in different colours and Singh writes in his notepad: chairs procured from different houses. That is not counted as poll expenditure, he reveals. As Majithia starts his speech in Burj Nau Abad,Singh instructs his cameraman to videograph it. In his speech,Majithia lashes out at Congress for letting loose 25 to 30 cameramen. They are with me when I go to sleep and when I wake up. Singh knows the remark is directed at him and nods in disapproval. Sometimes,I am targeted like this. But the Election Commission has assigned me this job. When on duty,I have no political preferences, he says. After Gosal Zimidara,Budha Theh and Umarpura villages,Singh reaches the last village of the day: Borewal Afghana. After the rally here,he faces the camera and reads out a summary of his observations in the 11 villages.
