Candidates know how to cope with ECI guidelines on printing of criminal antecedents
Kanwar Inder Singh/ royalpatiala.in
Election commission of India has instructed all the candidates to get their criminal antecedents (C1 form) in leading English daily and leading vernacular newspapers, of the region in context of Supreme Court’s order dated 13th February 2020, as approved by the commission, in the interest of electors, after filing their nomination papers.
It seems that the political candidates, who are fighting the assembly elections, are smarter than the election commission.
Almost all the candidates choose that newspaper, to get their criminal antecedents published, which has either no circulation in many locations or have very few copies, just to avoid the eyes of their area’s electorate. it seems, its just a paperwork of formality for a candidate. They are willfully doing this.
Like in Sangrur, Rajpura, where the candidates got their criminal antecedents published, that newspaper has less than 5 copies. Same newspaper in Nabha, Sunam has no copies. That newspaper in Patiala has less than 75 copies.
As per available information most of the party candidates, individuals got their C1 forms in this particular English daily.
When contacted a representative of the Patiala parliamentary seat candidate, who has pending cases against him and who’s C1 got published in that newspaper, as why they choose that particular newspaper, on this he said “we choose that newspaper because of the less circulation, rate factor. Advertisement in that newspaper is much cheaper as compare of other newspapers and has no circulation in our area. We don’t care about the lesser circulation of that newspaper in our region as the agent through whom we got our C1 published has arranged the required 5-7 copies. These types of newspapers, which have less circulation, are good for candidates with criminal antecedents. This suits us and even every politician as we ‘hit two birds with one stone’ means we did our duty by publishing it as per election commission guidelines and our voters didn’t even came to know about our criminal antecedents. We remained clean in front of our voters. ”
When contacted a newspaper industry specialist to know more about it, he said “as per the davp rate of the English newspaper given to candidates, the circulation of that newspaper is around 15,000- 20,000.In newspaper industry; every newspaper has to get an Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) certificate or a RNI yearly audit to get their certified circulation.Newsppaer with less circulation avoid auditing done by these prestigious agencies. A CA can give you a certificate, if the circulation is less than 25000 copies about the audit done, as per requirement. In this case, the copies of that English newspaper seem to less, as per the ECI guidelines. Overall circulation in the region can be gauged from the fact that a newspaper which has less than 100 copies in a big city like Patiala, can have how many copies in Punjab. ”
As per the election commission orders-a National newspaper-daily newspaper with at least one edition with a circulation beyond 75,000 as stated by DAVP/ Audit Bureau of Circulation. Editions in more than one State, as reflected in the publicly available records of DAVP/ Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC).
Similarly, local vernacular newspaper-any daily newspaper –at least one edition published within the geographical territory of the State, in the local vernacular language, with a circulation of at least 25,000 as stated by DAVP/ ABC. Newspapers registered with the DIPR of the concerned State/UT and eligible for receiving advertisements from it.
Candidates know how to cope with ECI guidelines on printing of criminal antecedents . To know the reaction of election commission, we contacted the CEO Punjab Dr S Karuna Raju and additional CEO Punjab DPS Kharbanda. But didn’t respond to the phone calls and what’s app messages.
February 17,2022
