While a whopping Rs.7500 crore is anticipated as the expenditure for conducting elections to assembly and parliament , the election commission has advised all state governments to keep a full vigil on malpractices and over expenditure in the districts and central offices also.
With the EVM's deployment a major expenditure account of printing ballot papers is avoided.But a senior Election commission official and his stooges had made every election a money minting exercise till 2010 by centralizing all printing in Hyderabad and getting a neat commission on them. A sum of Rs.116 crore was released directly for expenditure in the general elections and also the local body polls in the state from March to May . In fact AP is the only state which is conducting five polls and the voters have to cast 5 votes in all will cost Rs.500 crore , say Banwar lal ,chief electoral officer of AP .
The election watch has also been assigned the task of monitoring the expenditure on publicity and functioning of the office of the Chief Electoral Officer where a former Joint EO is continued on deputation deliberately for the current elections.The ex-JEO is known for his corrupt deals and also a sympathizer of MIM and YSRC .The vigilance commission is also looking into reports of misappropriation of funds by the election officials as AP is the only state which handled over 81 assembly and 5 parliament bye polls in 2009-2013 season.
