The Election Commission has devised a way to try and beat the defiant graffiti gang at its own game.

The commission’s MCC (model code of conduct) squad will now go around town wiping clean walls that have been defaced without the permission of owners, videotape the evidence for prosecution and send the whitewash bill to the guilty parties.

“We had earlier taken the softer approach of serving showcause notices on the guilty parties and giving them three days to clean the walls they had defaced. That didn’t work. If these parties are itching to be disciplined, so be it,” chief electoral officer Debashis Sen told Metro.

The commission decided to crack the whip after being deluged by complaints from owners of properties whose walls were defaced either by force or on the sly. Metro ran a campaign for weeks against wall graffiti (some grabs left).

In Calcutta North constituency, returning officer Chittaranjan Das received 1,491 complaints till April 8. “We served 758 notices and asked police to lodge 60 FIRs. Till date, barely 75 of those defaced walls have been wiped clean. The parties just don’t care,” he said.

Does the commission think parties and their graffiti gangs will start caring if the new strategy is implemented?

“We have issued instructions to our teams across the state about what to do to make these parties fall in line. Wherever prosecution has begun for violation of the graffiti rule, the MCC squad will wipe walls clean and the parties would be asked to foot the bill. The process will be videotaped as evidence, to be submitted in court,” Sen said.

The sitting MP from Calcutta North, Mohammad Salim of the CPM, and his rival, Sudip Bandopadhyay of the Trinamul Congress, allegedly have almost 600 graffiti violations each against their names.

But tourism minister Manab Mukherjee, who is in charge of Salim’s campaign, claimed that the party had “taken care” not to deface any wall without the house owner’s consent. “We took prior written consent for all the CPM graffiti that you see on walls in Calcutta North; so the question of wiping walls clean does not arise,” he said.

In Calcutta South, where CPM leader Rabin Deb is pitted against Mamata Banerjee, returning officer B.P. Gopalika has received 1,205 complaints (till April 16) about graffiti without permission.

“We have issued 630 showcause notices but received only 190-odd consent letters so far,” Gopalika said.

Election officials said that of the 1,200-odd complaints in Calcutta South, over 600 were against the CPM and around 360 against the Trinamul Congress.

In South 24-Parganas, over 2,806 instances of graffiti-without-permission have been recorded till April 16.

District election officer Khalil Ahmad said 1,200 of those complaints were against the CPM and around 950 against the Trinamul. “According to data available with us, 299 walls have been wiped clean since showcause notices were issued. Prosecution has been initiated in 156 instances.”

The level of compliance is slightly higher in North 24-Parganas, where the guilty parties have wiped 767 defaced walls clean after receiving showcause notices.