New Delhi, July 14 (IANS) Former Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) S.Y. Quraishi has said that curbing the influence of money power in elections was one of his biggest priorities after taking charge of the Election Commission of India (ECI) in 2010.

Recalling his tenure, he said the Commission identified 40 different methods through which money was allegedly used to influence voters and seized crores of rupees, which later increased to hundreds of crores, during its crackdown on electoral malpractices.

In an interview with IANS, Quraishi said that cash was distributed to voters through a variety of methods, including under the guise of wedding celebrations and birthday parties, as political workers attempted to evade the Election Commission’s monitoring mechanisms.

Responding to a question on whether money power was widely used during elections under the UPA-led government, Quraishi said: “That is a serious question because when I took over in 2010 as CEC, I gave myself, in my own inaugural press conference, two challenges. One was voter apathy, particularly of a so-called educated urban people, who were never voting and were bragging about it, and second was money power.”

Explaining the measures introduced by the Election Commission to tackle the issue, Quraishi said the Commission established two dedicated divisions to address its key concerns.

“We found a solution; the solution that we suggested and we tried to do was to create two separate divisions in the Election Commission. One was for voter education; we brought a professional from the Information and Broadcasting Ministry as its first Director General,” he said.

“And for money power, we created the Expenditure Monitoring Division, where we got an Income Tax Service officer who was working in the CBDT and made him the DG. He created the rules and regulations and all that, which we publicised; we gave training to politicians so that they do not make mistakes. We wanted to be preventive rather than punitive,” Quraishi added.

The former CEC said the Election Commission initially achieved considerable success after strengthening its monitoring mechanisms, leading to substantial seizures of cash allegedly meant for distribution during elections.

“Initially, we had great success because we started seizing money in crores and later on hundreds of crores. But, in fact, in my first book, ‘An Undocumented Wonder: The Making of the Great Indian Election’, it’s mentioned that I had identified 40 modus operandi of abuse of money power, which is what we had discovered,” he said.

“You know how they were using money through newspapers. You know when you open the newspaper, the cash will flow, or they will go door to door. Slip in some gold chain, and they were holding fake marriage parties and birthday parties to host the voters to dinner and all that,” Quraishi mentioned.

He said the Commission uncovered several innovative methods allegedly adopted to influence voters, but acknowledged that new techniques may have emerged over time.

“We discovered all kinds of modus operandi. But I’m sure they have come up with many more. So, I would not say that we have controlled the situation as we would have wanted to,” he added.

–IANS

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