Killing of People's Right by Election Commission in Chandigarh Municipal Corporation Elections

PRESS RELEASE

Killing of People's Right by Election Commission in Chandigarh Municipal Corporation Elections

Dear Media/Press

After 3 months of efforts by Chandigarh Anna Team, finally when today thousands of people came out of their houses to cast FORM-11A vote, most of them were not allowed to cast their votes. It was very shocking that even after confirmation from Election Commission and Mr. Anil Kamboj, all the Presiding Officers in all Polling Booths were not aware about Form11-A. Confirmation via Telecon from all RETURNING OFFICERS was also taken and everybody confirmed that they are aware about FORM-11A.

Mr. Anil Kamboj confirmed that the information about FORM-11A has been included in the TRAINING PROGRAM and all the Polling Booth incharges will be trained accordingly. But the trust of people has been betrayed by Election Commission staff. This is the death of democracy today. The rules of Election Commission sound effective and strict but ground reality is that they are not been implemented effectively at all. Team Anna believe that this has been intentionally by some people so that voice of “RIGHT TO REJECT” could be dumped but now this voice will raise with more aggression.

Rahul Bhartiya received more than 100 calls since morning when people complained that the Presiding Officers are not allowing them to cast their vote of FORM-11A. Team Anna had to move on to all the polling booths after the complaint and talk to polling booth incharges and aware them about FORM-11A with the Voting manuals available with them. Still, polling booth incharges were not ready to admit their faults. Team Anna had to visit Vikas Nagar, Maulijagran, Sec-32, 33, 11, 37, 47, 45, 7, Industrial Area and various other polling booths on the complaint by people.

In Vikas Nagar, one of the Polling Booth Incharge admitted that she knows about FORM-11A but still she didn’t allow one of the people to cast his vote. When Team Anna went there and asked about the reason from the officer that why she didn’t allow the voter to cast the vote, then she started talking about here and there. Team Anna then called Mrs. Jaswinder Kaur, Returning Officer. When she came, She also didn’t listen to the issue and avoided the whole issue. Team Anna recorded the whole instance and showed in the PRESS CONFERENCE in the evening held at Sec-44, Chandigarh. Please click on the link to see the video http://youtu.be/Q_G8VtzL34s

The campaign of usage of FORM-11A has been started by Chandigarh Team in all across India and the response of people was huge but election commission destroyed whole spirits of people. The huge response of people shows that they want “BUTTON OF RIGHT TO REJECT” in voting machine. The campaign of demand of “RIGHT TO REJECT” button in Voting Machine has been started and now TEAM ANNA won’t stop and will continue with this campaign in Mumbai BMC Elections and other coming elections. We had circulated more than 1.5 lakh handbills all across Chandigarh and Chandigarh Team was expecting good numbers of Voting for FORM-11A but Elections Commission itself has suppressed the voice of people by not allowing them cast their vote of 11A. Team Anna is satisfied that atleast people have got awared from our programs and will raise their voice more aggressively from next time.

Team Anna will write an email to Election Commission tomorrow about the reasons.

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Rahul Bhartiya - Team Anna
India Against Corruption Team - Chandigarh Tricity

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