Chennai, March 21- The Election Commission officials in Tamil Nadu are nowadays very busy in finding out ways and means to tackle the perennial problem of the state during the poll process. ‘Cash for votes’, is the acute problem the state of Tamil Nadu is facing for the past five years and more. Both the major Dravidian parties, i.e., the DMK and the AIADMK were spending unimaginable, huge sums for purchasing votes. The famous term “Tirumangalam formulae” had got in to even the Wikipedia and it denotes massive bribing of voters. This happened during the 2009 January assembly bye election to the Thirumangalam constituency in Madurai.
Each voter was given anywhere between Rs.1,000 to Rs.3,000 by the then ruling party DMK and the party president and the then CM of Tamil Nadu M Karunanidhi’s son MK Alagiri played a pivotal role in it. However the DMK’s arch rival AIADMK too is playing the same game with its party cadres and even ministers were seen indulged in open distribution of money ever since Jayalalithaa came to power in 2011 May. In the all five bye elections which were held in the state for the assembly crores of rupees was spent by the ruling AIADMK and it was distributed brazenly by senior party functionaries including the sitting ministers and MLAs.
However this time the Election Commission has decided to do everything under its command and also decided to adopt novel methods to check the menace. For this the Commission had roped in actor Kamal Hassan to educate people about the noble cause of voting without getting money. In a short film produced by the Commission Kamal Hassan is saying ‘selling your vote is selling your future’. The video, brain child of the Tamil Nadu Chief Election Commissioner Praveen Kumar was already uploaded in the CEO’s You Tube and Facebook pages. The Commission has already wrote to the Censor Board for its certification for screening this in cinema halls.
The Commission had already taken steps for screening this video in private television channels. “Yes. I am taking steps in this regard. I wrote to all the major private TV channels in the state. Under the Corporate Social Responsibility Scheme (CSR) the private channels can do this. We are pushing them for this” Praveen Kumar told indiatoday.in in a brief telephonic conversation. While the muscle power a major problem for the Commission in the northern India, in Tamil Nadu money power, i.e., cash for votes is the huge problem for the commission.
-Indiatoday
