Much has been done by the ECI to make the election free and fair from anything. SEEV campaign, workshops and many other including painting competition,, poster campaign etc. etc, many have been done to make aware the voters that election is one of the most important event of democracy and electing of new law makers will make the future of the state. There were wide publicity by spending huge amount of money to make the voters understand that they should not be allowed to buy their valuable vote for a mere few money. But, the question is does those campaigns, publicity and all the effort really works or not.
Well first phase election was held on March 4 for the state of Manipur in 38 Assembly constituencies and 2nd phase election is just two days to go in 22 assembly constituencies. If one is sincere enough to tell what had witness during the first phase election, the kind of publicity, advertisement, and other form of campaign conducted by the ECI to prevent voters from selling themselves. He or she would definitely say that ‘the campaign never work’ and are useless.
It is an open secret that, in almost all the assembly constituencies that election for the first phase was held, there were no dearth for use of money power. Almost all candidates, with exception to some distributed money to the voters ranging from Rs. 300 to Rs. 5000/-. This is known by every voters but the problem in exposing such thing is that no voters are ready to come out to tell that money were offered to them by the candidates.
Back some few months or says weeks, certain important issues like the territorial integrity, corruption, framework agreement, economic blockade etc. seems to the issues of this election. But as few days were left, all issues seem to be meaningless and almost all workers and candidates busied themselves in buying voters. This was what was witnessed in the first phase Manipur poll.
Saying so it does not meant that that money would really work or not but the reality is that effort for buying of votes was common in almost all assembly constituencies.
Something is seriously wrong in the electoral system of our country. The laws the guidelines don’t actually work in the field. The Indian lawmakers need to work out something that will really make election by the people besides empowering the more to the Election Commission of India.
