EC powerless as candidates submit fake bills, deflate poll expenses

DEHRADUN: As candidates in the fray for the upcoming urban local body polls continue to submit wrong expenditure figures, the election commission has come out as powerless. Even after issuing two notices, all the 11 mayoral candidates for the Dehradun Municipal Corporation (DMC) submitted highly deflated poll expenses to the election commission on Monday.
On Tuesday, the election commission prepared a third notice for all the 13 candidates.Officials at the commission said that unlike the parliamentary or state assembly elections, the commission has very limited powers during the panchayat and urban local elections.
State election commissioner, Chandrashekhar Bhatt, said that if the commission finds irregularities in the expenditure figures, it can debar the candidate from contesting elections for a period of five years.
“We record the expenditures of the candidates and whenever we get such complaints we have the option of debarring the candidate from contesting elections,” Bhatt said, adding that the commission keeps a vigil on the civic and panchayat elections as well.
However, the officials dealing with the process have a different story to tell. One of them, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the commission does not have enough manpower to check or monitor the campaign of every candidate, leaving the commission with no choice but to just issue notices.
“We are not even allowed to check the accounts of the candidates due to which many of them just submit fake bills. Most of the times, we do not even verify if these bills are real or fake,” said an official at the commission. The official added that unlike the assembly or parliamentary elections, no significant steps are taken by the commission to check the supply of liquor and cash.
He added that the commission has around eight officials to check the expenditure documents of all the candidates in the 100 wards of the DMC. “On an average we have at least four candidates in each ward. It means every official is dealing with around 50 candidates. They record the expenditure of each candidate but we don’t have the adequate staff to verify their documents,” the official added.
Another official said that many a times, there have been instances when the candidates have submitted the bill of the same vendor for multiple commodities.
Meanwhile, owing to the lack of staff, the officials issue the same notices to all candidates. The officials just change the name and date and send these notices to the candidates without mentioning any specifics.
A senior election commission official, who has been part of the expenditure monitoring committee, said, “The commission should be given enough power to summon the candidates and ask them to explain the expenditure figures. Also, like the parliamentary and assembly election, we must have the powers to go through the financial details of every candidate so that their funding and expenditure can be measured correctly.”
He added that there are over 400 candidates just in Dehradun. “For such a huge number, we need at least the double the staff. We also need patrol vehicles to monitor the election process.”