Bhubaneswar: For the last couple of general elections, politically aware citizens of Odisha have been waking up to a steady feed of statistics about the candidates in fray.
Within days of valid nominations being declared, Odisha Election Watch (OEW), a self-styled election watchdog comprising politically aware veteran citizens and a group of volunteers, compiles, curates and makes public facts and data about candidates public that would not have been easily accessible unless someone dedicatedly searched for it.
Odisha Election Watch, a state-level chapter of National Election Watch, is an association of politically aware and concerned citizens that aims to make voters know about their political leaders in details including financial, criminal and educational backgrounds. These reports are especially helpful for mediapersons, election observers and anyone who keeps track of the electoral process.
“The reports prepared by the Odisha Election watch saved a lot of time and effort. While doing political reporting during elections, it helped a lot,” said Harihara Chand, correspondent at OTV.
This year, OEW has brought out several interesting facts about the general elections and candidates, such as:
a) As many as 147 out of 673 MLA candidates in first phase, and 186 out of 747 faced various criminal charges
b) That 103 MLA candidates in first phase, and 141 in second phase had assets of more than Rs 1 crore
c) That there were 52 and 63 women candidates contesting in first and second phases respectively
While the organization says its sole purpose of analyzing affidavits and putting out reports is to let voters take an informed decision, efforts to do a thorough fact-finding or investigation that would have been more helpful for voters in selection of their leaders, seems outside its purview.
“We don’t investigate details mentioned in the affidavits as we believe them to be true and submitted in good faith,” said Ranjan Mohanty, Co-ordinator, Odisha Election Watch.
Another omission of the watchdog seems its inability to cover all elections, not just to Assembly and Parliament. The watchdog is yet to release a report covering polls to local urban and rural bodies held few months back.
“As the urban local bodies elections were held back to back with short period of gaps and followed by general elections very quickly, we did not get time to cover the ULB polls,” said Mohanty, adding his organization would soon publish a report on polls to Zilla Parishads in the state.
Basically, the organization gets funding through donations apart from contributions from Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), he added. The Election Watch claims to have volunteers from all walks of like starting from youth to senior citizens, retired bureaucrats, civil society members and NGOs. There is a core team in Bhubaneswar which arranges for compilation and dissemination of their analyses through media.
Political science expert N. Gaan, Professor at Utkal University, said though the Odisha Election Watch’s reports provide some information about the background of politicians, on-ground verification could have been better.
“I agree that these reports will make people conscious about whom to vote. This will help in judging politicians better. But who knows whether the affidavits are true? Maybe some politicians are hiding criminal charges or lying about property to evade income tax,” Prof Gaan remarked.