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Politicians may no longer be able to get away with bribing voters, with the Home Ministry accepting an Election Commission proposal to declare the act a cognisable offence. In the Draft Criminal Law Amedment Bill, 2016 circulated last month, the Home Ministry had proposed making bribery a cognisable offence on the poll panel’s recommendations.
Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi told BusinessLine in an exclusive interview that the panel also plans to introduce Electronic Voting Machines with enhanced security features, while asserting that the machines in use are safe.
The CEC said the Commission was yet to “formally” hear from the government about a proposal to hold simultaneous elections to Parliament and State Assemblies although President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have spoken about the issue on public platforms.
Zaidi has been of the opinion that simultaneous polls, as and when they happen, will be held in multiple phases — on the lines of the 2014 Parliamentary elections, which extended for about 10 weeks.
On misuse of social media by political parties and candidates, the CEC indicated that the thinking in the Commission was of working on a complaint-based system, as it did not have the wherewithal to monitor the same.
Read full interview here: "We don't have means to monitor bottomless social media"
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