The Election Commission of India’s persistent efforts have led to a significant and exponential increase in seizures in the five poll-going states of Mizoram, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Telangana. Seizures over Rs 1760 crores have been reported in the five poll going states since announcement of the elections, which is more than 7 times (Rs. 239.15 Cr) the seizures made in previous Assembly Elections in these States in 2018. The seizure figures from the ongoing elections in the five states and few previous state assembly elections demonstrate ECI’s unwavering commitment to ensuring free, fair and inducement free elections by implementing robust measures to monitor inducements and curb electoral malpractices for a level playing field. It may be recalled that seizures over Rs 1400 crores were done in the past six state assembly elections held in Gujarat, HP, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Tripura and Karnataka which is 11 times of the previous assembly elections in these states.
This time the Commission has also embedded technology into the monitoring process through the Election Expenditure Monitoring System (ESMS) which is proving to be a catalyst, as it brought a wide array of Central and State enforcement agencies together for better coordination and intelligence sharing. ESMS is an endeavour aimed at quick sharing of information by intercepting enforcement agencies to other relevant agencies for multiple deterrence. ESMS provides easy coordination at CEO & DEO level with multiple enforcement agencies involved in election expenditure monitoring process. The platform facilitates real-time reporting, saves time in collecting and compiling reports from various agencies and better coordination. As per reports received from poll-going states, this internal app is working well and helping in the election expenditure monitoring process.
