The 10th Assembly elections must be one of the most violent elections the state has witnessed. Most violence were related to insurgents and even those groups now on truce with the government. What does it mean ? It means the state has failed to understand the insurgency problem and bring an end to it. Former insurgents, pro talk insurgents or hard core all seem to be bent on disturbing the elections. The reasons may be different, some want to project their own candidates, some to oppose the system itself. Whatever be the reason the state should seriously deal with the protracted insurgency problem otherwise the loss of lives and properties will continue and may increase with each coming elections. The casualties inflicted are tremendous , so many innocent lives are lost, workers fight among themselves when the candidates and the winners will become friends tomorrow. Serious election reforms are needed. The mechanism to check election expenditure was successful from the outside but when seriously viewed specially on the election day Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes were everywhere, in the streets, bylanes, near the polling stations. It can be gauged from the poll trend itself, people started coming out after noon and by 1 and 2 pm activities of the candidates and their supporters increased near the polling stations. The failure is the inability of the authority to involve people’s participation in the campaign against misuse of power and money. All the discussions, campaigns could not be seen in the newspaper, it would have been good if discussions were organised in the private TV channels, however unluckily people could not watch TV as there was no power supply during the peak of election time. When election notification was issued the Electricity department also issued black out order. How can we expect flawless election process when people did not get the chance to listen to the candidates. We wonder how many public functions the candidates addressed during the entire one month campaign. Democracy will be meaningful only when there is full participation of the people.
Read more / Original news source: http://manipur-mail.com/violent-expensive-elections/
