Expense limit: Poll panel toothless

Bhubaneswar: State Election Commission has fixed expenditure limits for candidates contesting the three-tier panchayat polls, but it has no power to take action against violators. None of the three acts that govern the panchayat elections empowers the commission to punish erring candidates. Speaking to The Telegraph, a commission official said: "Not a single person has been penalised for violating the expenditure limits ever since the commission was entrusted with the task of holding the elections to the grassroots level democratic bodies in the early 1990s." But, the commission keeps revising the expenditure limits and has even appointed 36 observers for 851 zilla parishad members, who will contest on party symbols, 6,801 sarpanchs and nearly 92,000 ward members who will fight without symbols. Incidentally, the commission last week had revised electoral expenses of candidates. A candidate vying to be elected as a sarpanch or a panchayat samiti member can spend Rs 80,000, while for a zilla parishad candidate the expenditure limit is Rs 2 lakh. However, in most cases candidates end up spending much more than the stipulated limits. "No candidate has been disqualified for exceeding the limit so far. In fact, the expenditure statements that candidates submit are never scrutinised. District election officers (district collectors) store the declarations in the form of affidavits. As we have no punitive powers, we do not scrutinise the veracity of the statements of the candidates," a senior commission official told The Telegraph pleading anonymity. The officer pointed out that there were no penal provisions in the Odisha Gram Panchayat Act, Odisha Panchayat Samiti Act and Odisha Zilla Parishad Act. But the commission has made submission of expenditure statements mandatory. "However, the Election Commission of India has the powers to take punitive action against erring Assembly and Lok Sabha candidates," he said. "In the absence of a law, it is left to the contesting candidates to approach the judiciary in the event of anyone violating the expense limits. Even courts have not given us any directive in this regard," he said. He added, "no expenditure observer has ever reported about any candidate surpassing the expense limits". An election official at the district level also admitted that it had no employee to engage in the futile exercise of scrutinising the expenditure returns of candidates. "It serves no purpose. If there is a dispute in the court, we can provide the statements. Even, these statements are not uploaded on our official websites, unlike the Election Commission," he said. "The expenditure ceiling is simply a farce. It has no legal binding on the candidates," said state president of All India Panchayat Parishad Sankarsan Parida. According to constitutional provisions, gram panchayat and panchayat samiti elections are to be fought without party symbol to make them free from party politics. Only zilla parishad elections are fought on party lines "We all know how political parties spend lavishly to establish their grip on the electorate," Parida said