Now that people have sorted out voter roll/EPIC card issues (or given up on the same), the next thing to attend to is the candidates themselves. Campaigns are on full swing; But with the election commission laying down strict guidelines for the candidates, citizens are not inflicted with the usual din.
However we still need to do the due diligence on who the candidate are in our constituency, whom do we vote for and on what basis? This is the information I found in the online space.
From the EC’s website:
Election commission site (http://search.eci.gov.in/ae%5f2008e) provides info on
– Party wise position
– Schedule of election
– See Table with Party and number of contestants. Click on contestant count to see list of contestants from each party.
The site also shows the constituencies by name/number; Click on your constituency on the left to get constituency summary, with schedule and list of candidates. Click on the link "Candidate Details" to see list of candidates in that constituency.
You can also use the candidates link on top to view break-up of contestants for Assembly Constituency and candidate details. Note that only 89 out of 224 ACs have candidates information available.
Click on your constituency to see details like polling date, contestants name etc.
Candidate CV would be useful!
Now the EC site has only the names of candidates, their age and allotted symbol. How does one get some background information about each of them. One option is to see the affidavits submitted by the candidates; Election Watch is working on digitising these documents…watch this space for updates on that.
Political parties should provide the CV of their candidates on their website. To make an informed choice, a voter needs to know beyond the background too. What has the candidate done till date? What bills did they help pass? What is their position on key issues? How do they expect to implement their plans? This would also help us assess their performance.
The BJP website only lists press releases of the lists of candidates for Karnataka election. I couldn’t find much on the INC site. Couldn’t find the Janata Dal’s official website.
Lok Paritran seems the most net savvy of the lot. They have the final list of candidates and the manifesto. They also sent us a pdf with the list of their candidates, photos and background summary.
LP_Candidates.pdf
If anybody has leads on any other parties’ website, do add your comment below ⊕
Affidavits from EC site: Some of the constituency names are linked to the candidate names. Some corresponding affidavits (scans of the kannada document) are uploaded as well.
See http://164.100.80.122/Affidavits
The EC site has PDF versions of the affidavits for some constituencies. For the constituency I reside in (Bangalore South) these seem available for 8 of the 10 candidates (except BJP and JDS). Hope to see those as well. However these are in Kannada only, which could be a limitation in a cosmopolitan city like Bangalore. Unlike me, a sizeable number of residents may not read Kannada.