CALCUTTA, Feb 3: The Left parties in West Bengal on Tuesday complained to the Election Commission against what they described as lack of impartiality of Doordarshan in giving coverage to events involving the Left parties and their candidates.The Communist Party of India (M) legislator, Robin Deb, who, along with representatives of the Revolutionary Socialist Party and the Forward Bloc, met Election Commissioner G V G Krishnamurthy here said that Doordarshan had given `negligible' coverage to the United Front rally here on January 31.
``They could show for three minutes a rally organised by another party on the same day, but had only 40 seconds for the UF rally, which had so many important people, including Prime Minister I K Gujral and his predecessor H D Deve Gowda,'' Deb said.
Claiming that a joint director of Doordarshan news was ``politically motivated against the Left,'' he alleged that while covering the filing of nominations by various candidates yesterday, DD showed the Congress and TrinamulCongress candidates in the South Calcutta constituency while ignoring the CPI (M) candidate, ``whose name was not even mentioned.''
Deb said that when he contacted Doordarshan to know the reason why the name of Prasanta Sur, CPI (M) candidate from South Calcutta, was not mentioned he was told by a senior DD staff that Sur, in fact, had not filed his nomination yesterday.
``You can all see this is not true. Doordarshan, however, had time to show footage of Tapan Sikdar filing nominations,'' he said.
In a memorandum submitted to Krishnamurthy, the CPI (M) had suggested to the Election Commission to reconsider its stipulation that not more than one-tenth of the total time alloted to national parties for use of the electronic media be utilised at any one regional DD kendra.
``This directive infringes upon the rights of the national political parties in allotting time for different states according to their suitability, influence and strength,'' he said, pointing out the stipulation did not apply toregional parties.
The CPI (M) has also requested the EC to allow each contesting candidates to appoint relievers for counting agents for each counting table to ensure faster and more fool-proof counting.
Deb was accompanied by his party colleague Sukanta Panigrahi, RSP representatives Sunil Sengupta and Ashok Ghosh and Forward Bloc's Barun Mukherjee.
A Congress delegation which also met Krishnamurthy demanded that the sensitive booths in the state should be identified after consulting all political parties, before deploying armed forces in those. PCC general secretary Manas Bhuniya, who led the delegation, said they had also requested the ec to issue directives to stop all on-going development projects alleging funds for these were being diverted to new projects.
They said Election Commission's restrictions applying to ministers during the polls should be extended to functionaries of the panchayats and municipalities ``as they might take a role in influencing voters.''
A demand for stopping of allon-going development projects were placed before the EC by the Congress delegation, which alleged that funds for the such projects were being siphoned off for starting new projects.
Later speaking to the media, Krishnamurthy, said the commission had tried its best to make this election a serious business by keeping away ``the non-serious candidates from the fray.''
He said that the non-serious candidates of late had trivialised a serious democratic process like the election. He said this year over 5,000 candidates will be in the fray ``as compared to 13,952 candidates in '96, 12,688 of whom had lost their security deposit.''
On the EC's effort to stop the criminals from going to Parliament, Krishnamurthy said: ``We have tried our best by making it compulsory for any candidate to declare if he was ever convicted.''
The measures against anyone violating the order by providing the EC with wrong information in this regard will send him/her in jail, ``may give us some reasons to be happy,'' he added.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
