With five states – Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Assam, Kerala and West Bengal – set to go to polls over the next one year, the Election Commission has asked the finance ministry to provide at least 150 Indian Revenue Service  (IRS) officers to be deputed as election observers to keep watch on poll expenditure of candidates and ensure free and fair polls.

The EC communication also for the first time formally expressed its desire to complete the electoral process in these states by the first quarter of next year. The EC also asked the ministry to ensure that all IRS officers deputed should be taint free and not the ones who were drafted by the government in the recent past as election observers. These observers will be selected from 1983 to 2005 batches.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes has agreed to spare five officers each from Chandigarh, Jaipur, Kochi, Pune, Guwahati and Nagpur while 10 officers each will be provided from other charges. Officers involved in investigation and time-barred sensitive assessment cases have been kept out of this process.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) captured the Rajasthan University Student Union (RUSU) polls in Jaipur, while the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) surged ahead in the rest of the state in the elections.

RUSU’s top two posts of president and vice-president were won by ABVP’s Manish Yadav and Meenakshi Meena, respectively, leaving NSUI to be content with just the post of general secretary (GS) that went to Narsee Kirad. The post of joint secretary (JS) was pocketed by the independent candidate Neha Lokwanya.

Students Federation of India swept the students elections at Himachal Pradesh University winning all four seats on the panel. Out of the three city colleges, SFI candidates also won in two of them, which included an all girls college. At one college National Students Union of India (NSUI) panel was declared winner.

Out of the total poll of 1807 votes, SFI’s Kushi Ram Veram secured 1080 votes to be declared as SCA president. Vipin Mehta by securing 1002 votes won as vice-president, Sunita Ranot polled 1040 votes to be declared winner as General Secretary and Ankush Mandyal by polling 1075 votes was winner for the joint secretary position in the elections.

The communist outfit has won the students body election for 10th year in a row.

Despite making a strong bid the BJP supported ABVP was unable to match the strength of their arch rivals on the campus with Baldve Deshta getting 642 votes for president, Priyanka Thakur 710 for vice-president, Rajinder Singh 684 for general secretary and Deepak Kumar 642 votes for Joint secretary.

Congress supported NSUI on the campus has once again failed to have any impact as its panel of Uminder Kumar got a mere 43 votes for president, Vimal got 86 votes for vice-president, Pankaj Kumar got 99 votes for general secretary and Kamlesh Kumar got 78 votes for joint secretary.

A day after addressing a farmers’ rally in Aligarh and leading a kisan delegation to PM Manmohan Singh, the party general secretary rushed to the Niyamgiri hills in Orissa to extend support to tribals in their fight against an industrial project. “I am your soldier in Delhi,” he told a gathering of tribals on Thursday making common cause with them.

The two back-to-back events straddling the western UP plains and the hills in Orissa’s tribal belt are a pointer to his plans for Mission 2014. Concentrating on rebuilding the Youth Congress, Rahul has so far focused mostly on UP, a state which he aspires to bring back to the Congress kitty in the 2012 assembly elections.

The Congress general secretary is scheduled to visit Hisar, Kurukshetra and Karnal on Friday to interact with students.

Rahul has been focusing on farmers too after protests in UP over land acquisition flared up.

Chief election commissioner S Y Quraishi  will be in Goa on a short visit from August 30 to September 1. Quraishi will be accompanied by election commissioners V S Sampath and Ravishankar Brahma, a new appointee, during the visit.

The election commission of India (ECI) as part of its diamond jubilee celebrations will hold a photo exhibition at the art gallery of the Entertainment Society of Goa (ESG) on August 30-31. A documentary titled ‘Elections in India- a mammoth exercise’ will be shown at the ESG from August 30 to September 1 between 9 am and 7 pm.

A Hyderabad based researcher who, along with two other accomplice researchers, got hold of an EVM (Electronic Voting Machine), and published a blog based on their research on the Internet which held the EVMs to be tamper able, was arrested on Saturday.

The name of the arrested researcher is Hari Krishna Prasad Murli Mohan Waimuru. He owns the Hyderabad based company, Netcom India Private Limited. Indian officials claim that the EVM was stolen from the collector’s office in Mumbai, and that the arrest was made to question Hari into naming the ‘anonymous’ source that he claims was responsible to supply that EVM to the researchers.

The research has also included experts from other countries. In a sting operation carried out by a TV news channel, Hari, along with the researchers, had demonstrated the faults in the EVM, which had created much controversies regarding the veracity of the election process. Hari will be in remand to police till 26th August.

Bowing to repeated demands of non-resident Indians (NRIs) for voting rights, the government on Saturday introduced a bill in the Rajya Sabha to enable them to register their names in electoral rolls.

Moving the Representation of People (Amendment) Bill 2010, law minister M Veerappa Moily said the fresh move would allow Indians living abroad, who have not acquired the citizenship of any other country, to register themselves in the constituencies where their place of residence falls, as mentioned in their passports.

This came after the minister withdrew the 2006 draft of the same proposed legislation saying he was doing so as it did not have details.

A 2006 draft of this proposed law was withdrawn as it did not have details regarding modalities on conferring voting rights to NRIs.

Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi Friday said the assembly elections in West Bengal will be held at their due time only and not be advanced.

Asked about the possibility of holding the elections ahead of schedule, Quraishi said as per the Constitutional provisions they were due only on June 11 next.

“The Constitution gives us the power on holding Assembly elections six months before the due date which is December 11, this year. Therefore, it is only after December 12 that we can decide about the best date for holding the election,” he told to mediapersons.

‘Before Dec 11, 2010 we are not in the picture at all. We can only say that the assembly elections in the state will be held between Dec 11, 2010 and June 11, 2011,’ he added.

Railway Minister and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee has been insisting on early polls in the Left Front-ruled state citing ‘breakdown’ of law and order there and that the government has lost the moral right to continue in office.

Quraishi maintained that they are satisfied with the preparedness of the state government, but declined to answer to a question whether the polls will be held in phases.

Harishankar Brahma has been appointed the third election commissioner. The former power secretary, who is a 1975-batch IAS of the Andhra cadre, is a personal choice of prime minister (PM) Manmohan Singh.

It was initially rumoured that a person from the legal service may be brought in as the third election commissioner since chief election commissioner (CEC) SY Qureshi and election commissioner VS Sampath both are IAS, but Brahma bagged the honour.

As secretary power, Brahma had done a commendable job and drew PM’s attention.

Hailing from Bodoland, he is the second election commissioner from the northeast after JM Lyngdoh. Brahma will serve for five years or until he attains the age of 65, whichever is earlier.

Countdown of Bihar legislative assembly elections may start this weekend with the Election Commission (EC) likely to announce the election schedule in the next few days.

According to indications available, the EC has already worked out details to hold elections for 243-seats in the eastern state in five phases and is likely to make a formal announcement to this regard on Saturday.

Election Commission, which is a three-member constitutional body with two election commissioners and a chief election commissioner, is unlikely to get the second election commissioner before Bihar elections. While Quraishi was promoted as the chief election commissioner on July 29 following retirement of his predecessor Navin Chawla, the government is yet to name the second election commissioner.

The Election Commission has already rejected demands for single day polling for al 243 seats and is likely to hold it in five phases to ensure better mobilisation and deployment of security forces in its bid to hold a free and fair election.

If the election schedule is announced on Saturday, polling for the first phase can be expected to be held in early October and spill over to early November so that it is concluded before the festival of lights Diwali, which falls on November 5.

After a gap of 13 years, RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav is back as a chief ministerial candidate, with the RJD-LJP alliance on Monday making public their seat adjustment for this year’s Bihar Assembly elections.

As per the seat adjustment announced jointly by Mr Yadav and Mr Ram Vilas Paswan on Monday, the RJD will contest a total of 168 seats, while the LJP will get 75 constituencies. While the two leaders asserted that their alliance is rock solid, Mr Paswan apparently succeeded in getting a good deal by getting his younger brother and state LJP chief Pashupati Kumar Paras as the candidate of the post of deputy chief minister.

The Congress Working Committee (CWC) is expected to hold a meeting on Monday evening to finalise the schedule for the election of the Congress President.

Sonia Gandhi is set to be elected to the post for the fourth time after she took over the reins of the party in April 1998.

The meeting may also discuss the allegations of corruption in Commonwealth Games and unrest in Kashmir, party sources said.

63-year-old Gandhi has created a record of being the longest-serving party Congress president and completed over a decade since she took over the top post in the wake of the party’s dismal showing in the Lok Sabha polls that saw the exit of  Sitaram Kesri from the post.She has so far been unanimously elected for the post barring once when Jitendra Prasada, a senior leader from Uttar Pradesh, had thrown his hat in the ring but failed miserably in the polls in 2000.

A group of IT experts from US have claimed that the Indian EVMs are not tamper-proof and asked the Election Commission to explore other forms of voting that provide “transparency” and security. The academicians and experts wrote the letter within days of a heated debate between IT experts and officials from ECI regarding the machines.

Among signatories to the letter are Prof Ben Adida (Harvard University), Dr Josh Benaloh (Microsoft Research), Prof Matt Blaze (University of Pennsylvania), Bill Cheswick (AT&T Shannon Labs), Prof Russell A Fink (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), Prof Ian Goldberg (University of Waterloo), Dr Joseph Lorenzo Hall (University of California, Berkeley/Princeton University / ACCURATE), Harri Hursti (CTO, Clear Ballot Group), and Neal McBurnett (Election Audits).

“As experts in electronic voting technology and computer security, we have significant concerns about the security, verifiability, and transparency of India’s EVMs,’ they wrote after attending an industry conference on this issue in Washington.

The idea of using the unique identity (UID) programme, or Aadhaar, to reform the public distribution system (PDS) through which the government supplies cheap grain, pulses and other essentials to people who most need them appears to be gathering steam, with Congress president and United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi signalling her backing for it.

The government’s effort to involve UID — also known as Aadhaar — in PDS comes after the Supreme Court suggested so last month.

Aadhaar aims to provide every resident with a unique identification number that can serve as proof of identity for everything from opening a bank account to receiving government subsidy to getting grains and other products from ration shops, the last link in PDS.

An official in the agriculture ministry confirmed a meeting on Nilekani’s proposal took place on Wednesday.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) held a Muslim conclave for the first time in a decade in Bihar.

In the party’s first minority meet since 1998, top State leaders echoed the motif that the State’s Muslim minorities were edging closer towards the BJP, while declaiming that the Congress was responsible for the deplorable conditions of the Muslims as brought out by the Sachar Committee report.

Speakers highlighted the 15 years of Lalu-Rabri-Congress misrule in the State.

Addressing the meet, BJP national spokesperson Syed Shahanawaz Hussain said the party had the largest minority base as compared to any other party in the State.

Union Agriculture Minister and NCP President Sharad Pawar  slammed the Narendra Modi government in Gujarat for the killing of Md. Sohrabuddin, his wife Kausar Bi and a student Ishrat Jahan and said that these fake encounter cases proved the ‘communal’ BJP’s political agenda.

The Gujarat government had the temerity to take law in its own hand by getting Sohrabuddin and others killed in orchestrated encounters even though it could have arrested them and tried them for their crimes in the court of law he said.

The killings showed the communal face of the saffron party and its selective targetting of the minority community, he said while addressing the state-level convention of NCP workers here.

Pawar also regretted that the communal forces have entrenched themselves in power in a state like Gujarat and selectively targetted the Muslims in a land which had produced an iconic personality like Mahatma Gandhi.

The Union Agriculture Minister questioned the secular credentials of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar saying that the latter followed political double standards by partnering the BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi to rule the state, while distancing himself from the other Modi (Gujarat Chief Minister).

The veteran NCP leader also had a dig at the Bihar Chief Minister for cancelling a dinner at the last minute for the BJP leaders two months ago after publication of an advertisement with the Gujarat Chief Minister ahead of the national executive of his coalition partner in June this year.

The Chief Minister, however, can not fool the people of Bihar and seek their support for another term in office by roping in the minority votes and at the same time sticking with the communal forces, the NCP President said.

He also castigated the NDA government for failure on all fronts during its five years’ rule in the state and said that it failed to set up industries during its entire term despite making tall promises on the development front.

Stating that the NCP under its MP Tariq Anwar could be the right alternative for the people in the forthcoming assembly polls in Bihar, he said that the NCP has consistently pursued a development agenda with the interests of the farmers, backward and downtrodden sections in mind.

The Congress attacked BJP in Chhattisgarh for portraying its chief Sonia Gandhi as a ‘witch’ in a cartoon on price rise, saying it has crossed the ‘limits of decency’.

While the BJP rejected the charge, saying a cartoon on a cover-page that appeared in its monthly mouthpiece Deep Kamal has a reference of ‘mahangai daayan’ (inflation witch) and it is just symbolic and intended to highlight the rising prices across country.

The cover page of the July issue of the in-house magazine of the party carried a cartoon of a woman resembling the Congress chief. The woman, portrayed as witch, sports Congress’ hand symbol on her forehead. A controversial title “Mahangai Dayan Khaye Jayat Hai”, a line of popular number of yet-to-be released Hindi film — Peepli Live — featured prominently on the page.

The cover-page cartoon also depicts look-alikes of the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, the Union finance minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, and the Union agriculture minister, Mr Sharad Pawar, with some sarcastic remarks on them.

Protesting against depicting Mrs Gandhi in an “indecent and disgraceful manner”, the Congress leaders and workers burnt the effigy of the Raman Singh government and the copies of the magazine in different parts of the state including the state capital.

The government on Friday (August 6) came under scathing attack for a third day on a row from a united Opposition over the issue of alleged corruption and financial irregularities in the upcoming Commonwealth Games scheduled in New Delhi from October 4-13.

Raking up the issue in the Lok Sabha BJP leaders, JD(U) Chief Sharad Yadav, Samajwadi Party (SP)supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav and RJD’s Lalu Prasad Yadav challenged the government to clarify the whole issue.

Calling it an Rs one lakh crore scam, Mulayam Singh Yadav said: “There are several areas of corruption within the Commonwealth Games.”

He further said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh must clarify on the scam Sharad Yadav also slammed the Congress party for ignoring the events concerning the Commonwealth Games.

Defending the government, Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam said, “The Commonwealth Games is the pride of the nation and any sort of corruption will not be tolerated by the government.

CPI(M) leader Basudeb Acharia demanded setting up of a JPC on the “large-scale corruption scam”, alleging that while a cricket stadium in Hyderabad was constructed at ` 90 crore, the renovation of Jawaharlal Nehru stadium in Delhi cost over ` 961 crore.

“There is no accountability. No one has been held responsible. Government says it does not have money to supply food grains,” Acharia said, with Gurudas Dasgupta (CPI) saying this was “a loot of public money” as over ` 50,000 crore was being spent on the games.

The election of Sonia Gandhi as Congress president for the third consecutive time is likely by end of August after the monsoon session of Parliament is over.

Congress Working Committee will announce a detailed schedule for the election, though there is no immediate official word from the party on when the CWC would meet, According to party sources.

The whole exercise generally takes around a fortnight after CWC finalises the schedule.

As per the earlier schedule, Gandhi was set to be re-elected by July 25. However, the delay in completion of organisational polls appears to have extended her election.

Gandhi created a record of being the longest-serving party President and completed over a decade since she took over the top post in 1998, in the wake of the party’s dismal showing in the Lok Sabha polls that saw the exit of Sitaram Kesri from the post.

The senior-most election commissioner, S Y Quraishi, is all set to become the Chief Election Commissioner on July 30. He will have a term of nearly two years.

Quraishi’s elevation to the top post was a certainty when he joined the commission in 2006 for a six-year term. Governments of all political hues have been following the seniority principle by elevating the senior-most EC as the CEC.

In the past four years, he has been involved in conducting elections to the offices of President, Vice-President, general elections to the Lok Sabha last year besides elections in a large number of states.