Team Anna meets EC, revives right to reject demand

Demanding electoral reforms, social activist Anna Hazare and his team on Thursday met the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) asking for the ‘right to reject’ option in Electronic Voting Machines and barring of candidates against whom courts have framed charges, from fighting elections. The activists demanded that two election commissioners should also get constitutional status like that of CEC.

Hazare and his team members including Justice (retired) Santosh Hegde, advocate Prashant Bhushan, RTI activist Arvind Kejriwal and former IPS officer Kiran Bedi met CEC SY Qureshi and discussed the issues with him for around an hour.

During their meeting, team Anna advocated for barring of candidates from fighting elections against whom courts have framed charges and inclusion of form 49(O), wherein a voter can say he does not want to vote for any of the candidates.

The activists described the meeting as useful and said the Commission was quite receptive to their ideas.