Nagaland Pradesh Congress Committee (NPCC) has sought a detailed clarification from Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) of India on inclusion of cost incurred in printing additional polling agent forms by Congress candidate as part of election expenditure and also cite reasons thereof.
In a letter to CEC, NPCC working president Khriedi Theunuo said his party had sent a letter on April 5 to Election Commission of India (ECI) seeking to know whether printing of polling agent forms by a candidate came under his or her election expenditure and reasons thereof. To this, the chief electoral officer’s office (vide letter no. ELE/CDT-92/2018/88, dated 5.4.2019) had replied that the expenditure incurred by the candidate or political party on printing of forms for appointment of polling agent, if any, should be included in the account of election expenditure.
In this connection, NPCC stated that there were 2,227 polling stations during the election to Nagaland’s lone Parliamentary constituency and about 4,600 polling agent forms were required by each contesting candidate for appointing two polling agents in each polling station. The CEO office had issued 3,500 polling agent forms on March 26 to the election agents of Congress candidate, creating a shortfall of 1,100 polling agent forms, it added.
Theunuo said the Congress candidate had to print additional polling agent forms by incurring an expenditure of Rs 1,300 to meet up the shortfall of polling agent forms issued.
In view of the above, NPCC demanded to know the reasons why the Congress candidate was issued lesser number of polling agent forms by the CEO office, and as to why the expenditure incurred for printing of additional polling agent forms by the candidate should be included in the account of his election expenditure.
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