Parties beware, big brother is not only watching but also rating you.

The office of the chief electoral officer has come up with a first-of-its-kind “violation index” to keep voters in Bengal informed about whether parties are adhering to the Election Commission’s model code of conduct.

“It’s a bit like the sensex (the stock market index). A party’s stock can fluctuate on a daily basis, depending on its performance. The only difference is that the lower a party scores in the violation index, the better it is,” chief electoral officer Debashis Sen said.

The ratings, to be calculated on the basis of violations reported by 120 “MCC (model code of conduct) officers” and complaints from citizens, will be updated daily. The index can be accessed at www.ceowestbengal.nic.in from April 2.

There will be no penal action on the basis of the index, though.

“This initiative has only moral significance. We can’t legally take action on the basis of the violation index. But we presume it will be a very accurate representation of how much or how little political parties adhere to the code of conduct in the run-up to the elections,” Sen said.

The four categories in the country’s first electoral violation index are wall graffiti on private property without written permission, wall graffiti on public property, incitement of communal sentiments through speeches or slogans and attempts to bribe voters. More categories will be added to the index over the next few days, Sen said.

Each of the four categories finalised so far has been assigned different rating points. A party inciting communal sentiments will get 10 points for each violation, nine for every attempt to bribe voters, one for an act of writing graffiti on a private wall without written permission and two for defacing the wall of a public structure.

Metro, which has been running a campaign against wall graffiti, has used different rating points for the third category in the illustrative chart.

Sen said the effort would be more successful if citizens participated in it. “Our MCC team will be looking out for violations across the state but civil society must play the bigger part. Citizens can call or send an SMS to the 24-hour helplines of the election cells of Calcutta and the police to lodge complaints in complete confidentiality. The monitoring team will verify the authenticity of the complaints and record these.”

Rabin Deb, the CPM leader who will take on Mamata Banerjee in South Calcutta, said: “We appreciate the chief electoral officer’s initiative. The concept of a violation index is quite interesting and should be a useful tool in the hands of the commission.”

But Trinamul Congress leader Partho Chatterjee called it a waste of time, just as he had done when the Election Commission made it mandatory for parties to seek permission in writing before using walls for graffiti. “How many people in this state would log in to check out the index? I doubt if I would.”

Pradip Bhattacharya, the working president of the PCC, said it didn’t surprise him that the authorities were coming up with new ways of ensuring free and fair elections. “I think it’s a brilliant idea. It will be a very useful index that could even influence the educated, tech-savvy electorate.”

Dipankar Ghosh, an RBI officer, could be one of those. “It’s a wonderful initiative. I salute the chief electoral officer of Bengal. I have a feeling this index will influence my vote.”

Samrat Dutta, 26, a final-year MBA student at the Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management, said he found the concept interesting but had reservations about its potential effectiveness. “First, there is no provision for penal action against violators. Second, only a few thousand people across the state will actually track the index online.”

Theatre actress Dolly Deb, 36, advocated “legal reform” to make the index count rather than be just an embarrassment quotient.

“What’s the point of taking so much trouble if parties can’t be booked? I think the commission should eventually push for legal reform so that parties scoring very high on the index can be penalised.”