NEW DELHI: After L K Advani, senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha has lauded the Election Commission for scrapping the Rajya Sabha polls in Jharkhand.
Going a step further, Sinha has asked the poll body to order a CBI probe into the whole election process.
Sinha has written a letter to Chief Election Commissioner S Y Quraishi, asking the poll panel to investigate the role of MLAs who signed the nomination papers of Independent candidates.
Noting that the state had become a ‘happy hunting ground for moneybags’, Sinha observed in his letter that those found guilty of electoral malpractices should be ‘barred from contesting elections for the maximum-possible period’.
Sinha also demanded that the expenditure limit for the Rajya Sabha polls should be ‘drastically’ reduced to a few thousand rupees as they were indirect elections.
He added that Quraishi should ask all candidates, who filed their nominations, to submit their election expenditure statements and get the same strictly scrutinised from the investigation agency with reference to the facts emerging during the investigation.
Sinha asked the EC to exercise ‘strict vigilance’ in the future from the beginning of the election process, as is done in the Lok Sabha elections. “Providentially some cash was seized by the income tax authorities. This proved the point that money was being freely used for these elections.”
“I shudder to think of what may have happened if this cash had not been seized and the Commission had not cancelled the election,” he noted in the letter.
He said the Rajya Sabha elections had become a ‘byword for electoral malpractices and horse-trading in many states’.