The five-member committee headed by Additional Chief Electoral Officer Narayan Navti appointed by the Chief Electoral Officer Kunal to probe the recent Goa Assembly election expenses is a mere farce and eyewash. The inquiry to be free and fair should instead be conducted by a retired High Court Judge assisted by an Accountant of his choice.
The Chief Election Commissioner of India Dr Nasim Zaidi has already been requested to order an independent probe into the acts of omission and commission by Goa CEO Kunal. The probe into this mega crore fraud cannot be a superficial in-house one conducted by officers who are working under Kunal himself.
Goa’s Chief Electoral Officer needs to explain as to why he has not yet displayed on the website the breakup of the total expenses incurred on the recent Assembly elections. Public funds cannot be squandered and the Chief Electoral Officer would have to justify every paisa spent.
As it is very surprising that such a whopping expenditure was incurred by the Government on the elections, we need to have an in-depth meticulous audit into all the expenses. The lack of transparency and the veil of secrecy in the working of the Chief Electoral Officer’s office is a matter of concern as it is a clear grim sign of bad governance. Any waste of taxpayers’ money is not condonable. Only a detailed and fair investigation will reveal to what extent the bills were inflated and wasteful expenditure incurred.
Chief Electoral Officer Kunal has been very partisan by not acting against the gross election malpractices indulged by the ruling BJP. Kunal and his jumbo team were mere spectators while the BJP freely distributed abundant cash in the two days prior to the Feb 4th elections.
Infact the office of Chief Electoral Officer has been reduced to a camp site of the ruling BJP. Persons known to be having close ties with the BJP should have not been assigned duties of conducting the elections.
All the so called arrangements made by Chief Electoral Officer were only cosmetic and portrayed as glossy on paper, while the ground reality was very different with even the staff deployed on election duty not provided the very basic amenities. Every citizen is now entitled to know the detailed expenditure of those mega crores spent on the elections. With Kunal as CEO in Goa, the Election Commission of India has miserably failed in conducting free and fair elections as mandated by law.
Did Kunal have to be reminded of those words of the Former Albanian Prime Minister Fatos Nano “Organising free and fair elections is more important than the result itself”.
