Hyderabad, November- 12 ,With the issuing of the notification calling for nominations, “one phase of the elections came to a close” but still, major works are ahead like polling, said the Chief Electoral Officer, Dr. Rajat Kumar.
At a news conference here on Monday on the occasion, he said the nominations could be filed between 11 am and 3 pm daily in all the constituencies except on holidays, including those under Negotiable Instruments Act. Expenditure of a candidate would be counted from the day of filing nomination.
Expressing happiness at one phase ending, he said 68 general observers would arrive in the State after the last date of nominations. There would be 53 expenditure observes drawn from Income Tax Department and 10 police observers.
The c-vigil, mobile app, by which one could lodge complaint against code violations, picked up momentum as complaints received so far reached a high of 2,251. Action was being taken by Returning Officers concerned. In all, 891 complaints were dropped as they did not come under the purview of model code violations.
The EC would allow 40 star-campaigners for national parties and 20 for state recognized parties, with the provision to shift expenditure on this count to the parties. He said, a different timing of 7 am to 4 pm had been fixed for polling in 13 specified constituencies, in view of the extremist problems there.
Reeling out statistics regarding the implementation of law till now, he said, the cash and liquor seized so far were to tune of Rs 77.62 crore and Rs 6 crore respectively. Over 4,038 unauthorized liquor shops were closed till date. Transport of cash even by banks should be backed by proper documents. Ministers should not attend caste-based meetings or any function which would allow uneven advantage to a party. Cashless hospital treatment would be allowed in case of CRPF and police personnel on election duty.
The CEO said, the total electorate had now gone up to 2.76 crore from 2.73 crore but this was still lower than the one in 2014 elections—2.83 crore. It was due to deletions of double entries etc from the rolls. Nevertheless, no single voter would be deleted from the rolls without the Election Commission clearance.