Vijayawada: CFD mulls revival of Election Watch

Vijayawada : In order to create district-wise Election Watch mechanism in 13 of the undivided districts of Andhra Pradesh, the Citizens for Democracy (CFD) in association with the Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI) in Hyderabad organised a meeting on Tuesday to explore possibility of the revival of AP Election Watch mechanism which was in vogue some time ago, according to secretary of CFD Dr Nimmagadda Ramesh Kumar.

He said in a statement here on Wednesday that the participants in the meeting included secretary of CFD Dr N Ramesh Kumar, chairman of ASCI K Padmanabhaiah, former CEC V S Sampath, president of CFD Justice Bhavani Prasad, L V Subrahmanyam, vice-president of CFD, members of CFD Dr P Raghu and Dr P V Ramesh, former chief secretary-AP SP Tucker, former chief secretary-TS Dr Rajeev Sarma, former CBI director M Nageswara Rao, former State Election Commissioner V Nagi Reddy, chairman of Red Cross Telangana Ajay Mishra, former director of CIPS D Chakrapani.

The CFD has shortlisted people of eminence who have been involved in various facets of public life to helm Election Watch programme which intends to establish a meaningful presence in the districts of AP so as to be available to the citizens at large, the civil society groups, various stakeholders in elections and particularly the media. The inputs so received would be brought to the notice suitably all of the district election authorities, the CEO-AP, and the general and district pbservers deputed by the ECI.

During the course of the meeting various provisions and refinements to the treatment of election expenditure have been discussed in detail and it is felt that there is an information gap with regard to permissible and un-permissible expenditure which are going unnoticed. The District Election Watch would keep a close watch on issues relating to the election expenditure, corrupt practices, paid news, as well as hate speech which come in the way of conduct of free and fair elections.

The CFD thanked K Padmanabhaiah for mentoring this important initiative which is the first of its kind. The Andhra Pradesh Election Watch wishes to bring about a degree of course correction in the poll process through awareness building as well as self regulation through the stakeholders.