Bihar chief electoral officer Sudhir Rakesh

Patna, May 14: Elections in Bihar once used to be synonymous with violence. The perception, however, has changed in the past few years and today’s experience of Bihar elections is being used to conduct free and fair polls in other parts of the country.

The recently concluded Bengal Assembly elections, which was, for a change, almost violence-free, is a case in point.

The Election Commission (EC) had started preparations for the elections right from January itself and it reposed faith in the Bihar chief electoral officer (CEO) Sudhir Kumar Rakesh, for collecting vital information from the ground to make necessary arrangements for conducting a free and fair poll in a state which has a past history of violent elections.

The EC, under the leadership of Bihar CEO, who had to his credit having conducted a free and fair Assembly election in Bihar in 2010, set up a team of special observers who were deputed to collect facts about the ground situation in different districts of Bengal.

Led by Rakesh, the team had five senior Indian Police Service (IPS) officers — D.K. Pandey, Zaki Ahmed, P.S. Ranpise, Jitendra Kumar and P.R.K. Naidu.

The team set out on an extensive tour of around 20 districts, including North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas, Howrah, East Midnapore, West Midnapore, Hooghly, Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri in two phases. While the first phase of visit to districts lasted from January 16 to 22, the second one lasted from February 10 to 17.

The response of the people was extraordinary with large number of them turning up wherever the team members went. One of the most interesting experiences the team members had was at Calcutta airport where a group of people started requesting the team members that they should take all possible steps to ensure free and fair polls in the state.

“The team members were surprised to see the reaction of people at the airport as such things generally happen in rural areas,” a highly placed source, preferring anonymity, told The Telegraph and added that similar requests flooded the team wherever it went.

The purpose of these visits was to interact with people to find out the ground reality. The exercise proved very useful as the extensive interaction allowed the EC to get an input which helped in making the necessary arrangements to control situation in a state which is politically very volatile.

“The team found that incidents of intimidation of voters were very common in villages. Political division was very clear and those dominating a particular region were using force to intimidate supports of opponent camp,” said the source.

Information like collection of illegal arms, burning of houses of political opponents, violent attacks on each other by people standing on different sides of the political divide were verified and were found to be very common in rural and semi-urban areas. Use of professional criminals in such incidents also came to light.

Based on the feedback provided by the team, the EC took corrective steps and a special drive was launched to execute non-bailable warrants as well for arresting of persons who were named accused in violent incidents in which FIRs had been lodged.

The team also found that the environment at the ground level was very volatile and special efforts were required to ensure free and fair polls. Special emphasis was laid on vulnerability mapping and to instill a sense of faith in such voters, people, who were identified as threat to such vulnerable voters, were arrested in large number.

The team also dug out a very interesting practice prevalent in Bengal. It sent a report to the EC informing that two nights preceding the date of election were very vital, as incidents of attack on political rivals increase.

Based on these inputs, EC took special steps and issued instructions to ensure area dominance by security personnel and administra-tion on these two vital nights in the constituencies going for poll.

“It did wonders as those planning to indulge in violence were checked in time and the fear factor of voters was addressed in a very methodical manner well before the votes were actually cast,” said the source and added that very high voter turnout in Bengal elections was a testimony of this fact.

The EC used Bihar officer not only to collect vital information for conducting free and fair polls, rather officials from Bihar were also used in conducting training programmes for the Bengal officials who were used to conduct free and fair polls.

Additional chief electoral officers of Bihar P.K. Gupta and Kumar Anshumaly as well as the deputy election officer Baiju Nath Kumar Singh were sent to Bengal for conducting the training programme for election-related officials.