Special Correspondent
Election Commission explanation soon "It is one person [Mr. Saptharishi] against so many people whose views were heard. Admittedly he was the Special Observer but he did not have overriding powers. The view of the majority and those senior to him has to prevail."
NEW DELHI: Election Commission sources on Saturday said the May 10, 2004 order countermanding the polls in Bihar’s Chapra Lok Sabha constituency was self-explanatory - it was signed unanimously by all the three members including Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) T.S. Krishnamurthy. None challenged it in the Supreme Court a year after it was passed.
Maintaining that there was no bias in ordering re-polling, the sources said the EC would come out with its explanation soon after Mr. Krishnamurthy returned to Delhi.
The order ran into a controversy after a senior bureaucrat, who was the EC’s Special Observer for Bihar, suggested that two Election Commissioners including the next CEC had made "every attempt" to "countermand the poll after listening to the unreasonable demands of L.K. Advani [Bharatiya Janata Party leader] and Rajiv Pratap Rudi [BJP candidate and sitting member of Parliament] after the polls were over."
Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Lalu Prasad was among the opposing candidates.
The IAS official, L.V. Saptharishi, in a letter to the Law Ministry, also said the CEC "was not allowed by these two Election Commissioners [B.B. Tandon and N. Gopalaswamy] to accept my report" and "forced the CEC to go in for re-polling in all the polling stations."
No over-riding powers
The EC sources said: "It is one person [Mr. Saptharishi] against so many people whose views were heard. Admittedly he was the Special Observer but he did not have overriding powers. The view of the majority and those senior to him has to prevail."
The order countermanding the polls said officials on the ground recommended fresh polls in a few stations and "attempted to paint the picture that the polling in the constituency was by and large peaceful barring a few incidents here and there."
But the EC deputed a two-member team, which heard Mr. Rudi and Mr. Prasad, met senior officers and interacted with the locals.
It was on the basis of these inputs that the EC "unanimously" held the polling in all the stations "null and void and countermanded the poll."
Website details process
The May 10, 2004 order posted on the EC web site narrates the process which led to the countermanding, including opening voting registers and discovering malpractices, non-deployment of paramilitary forces at several places, booths remaining totally unguarded and incidents of bomb throwing.
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