Internal bickering, lack of foresight and inadequate state support have ensured that the Thane civic poll results are not declared on the voting day.
Instead of helping the Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) which dared to announce results on the day of the election, the state and security agencies have asked it to postpone the results to the next day.This will cost the municipal body Rs50 lakh which it intended to save by using a new technology.
“By using GIS (Geographic Information System) technology and software, we were going to declare the results on the same day of the polls.This would have helped us save Rs50 lakh that could have been used for ward development projects,” said RA Rajeev, municipal commissioner, TMC, who was disappointed with the state election commission’s (SEC) decision to declare the results on February 17, one day after the polls. The counting will now take place on February 17 using GIS technology.
The SEC’s decision to postpone election results by a day came as a surprise to the TMC as the former had wholeheartedly supported the latter in this effort. Neela Satyanaryan, state election commissioner, had said while addressing a press conference on January 17 in Thane, “We are really looking forward to this experiment as it will save deployment of manpower (civic and police), time and money.”
In fact, it was the SEC which had approached 10 municipal corporations four months ago asking them if it was possible to declare the results on the day of the election.And it was TMC which took the initiative and created a software, G-elect that would help it do so.
However, police intervention has led this experiment to be terminated abruptly.“The police told us that Thane has certain communally sensitive pockets and there might be riots/rallies if the results are announced the same day.And as their men will be on their toes the entire day they will not be in a position to handle any law and order problem,” said an SEC official. “For us, human life is important, so we have postponed counting.”
However, this is not the first time that results would have been declared on the same day of the polls in Thane.In the 1997 civic polls, the results were declared at 12 midnight of the day of the polling. Sensitive areas existed even then.Both the police and SEC have no response to this fact.
When contacted, KP Raghuvanshi, Thane police commissioner, said, “Vote counting is happening the next day at so many places in the state.If we have to do counting and declare the results on the same day, then we will need additional manpower,” said Raghuvanshi.
When contacted, K Subramanyam, director general of police (DGP), Maharashtra, said that their refusal to give permission was not due to reasons related to manpower or communally sensitive areas.“It is not a question of manpower or sensitive areas.There are certain prominent reasons which I cannot explain,” he said.He refused to divulge further details.
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