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'EC will first satisfy itself about Gujarat's state'

The Election Commission said on Monday that it would have to be satisfied that the right conditions prevail in Gujarat for a free and fair poll before it decides on the dates, according to Congress politician Manmohan Singh, who led a delegation of the party to Nirvachan Sadan.

Emerging from the 75-minute meeting with Chief Election Commissioner J M Lyngdoh, Dr Singh said, "We are not against the holding of elections. We are a political party. Elections are the normal route to settle political battles. But it is the observation of the commission [that it has] to be satisfied that elections will take place in conditions where free and fair polls can take place," he told reporters.

Singh said the delegation told Lyngdoh that in Ahmedabad itself more than 13,000 people are still living in refugee camps. "Thousands of people are still there in camps which are theoretically closed," he said, "and thousands others have left the state and are living outside because they fear for their lives. The emphasis should be to inspire confidence among the people to work wholeheartedly for providing relief and rehabilitation. [But] the state government has sought to capitalise on the communal tension to introduce this new element of the sudden dissolution of the assembly."

Asked when his party would like the election to be held, Rajya Sabha member and legal expert Kapil Sibal said, "It is the constitutional obligation of the Election Commission. As soon as they realise that you can have free and fair polls, they must announce the date. As a political party, we will accept that."

Asked to elaborate on the Congress team's meeting with the commission, Sibal said, "They heard us out and they will take their own decision."

Sibal said that his own view was that Article 324 is not subject to any other provision of the Constitution. "It says that the superintendence and control [of elections] rests with the Election Commission," he argued. "It is not bound by Article 174. Article 174, when it talks of a six-month limit, talks of a six-month limit [in the gap between sessions] in a live assembly. That does not apply to a dissolved assembly."

The Centre's plea for holding an early election in Gujarat is that the provision of Article 174 will be violated unless the new assembly is constituted by the first week of October, since the last session of the assembly was in April.

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