Election Commission Appoints Two Retired I-T Officers as Special Expenditure Observers

New Delhi: The Election Commission on Tuesday appointed two retired IRS officers of the Income Tax department as special expenditure observers for the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls.

The poll body said it had appointed Shailendra Handa and Madhu Mahajan to "supervise and monitor work done by election machinery and ensure stringent and effective enforcement action" in cases where usage of black money and illegal inducements to lure voters is detected.

The two officers will monitor intelligence inputs and also supervise complaints received through the C-Vigil app, launched by the commission for people to send to it video-based complaints of bribery of voters and check instances that vitiate the election process.

It said the officers have supervised many successful search and seizure actions leading to detection of tax evasion in "complicated" cases during their stint with the tax department.

While Handa, a 1980-batch IRS officer, has worked as the director of I-T investigations in Delhi and as the additional director general of the National Academy of Direct Taxes in Nagpur, Mahajan (1982 batch) has served as the DG investigations in Jaipur and also worked in Tamil Nadu.

In a separate development related to curbing black money in the polls, CBDT chairman P C Mody will hold a nationwide video conference meeting with all his I-T investigation units chiefs on Wednesday.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) is the policy-making body for the I-T department and the EC has brought on board about 700 election expenditure observers to monitor flow of cash and other items during the seven phase polls that begin on April 11.

The maximum number of election expenditure observers from this pool are drawn from the Indian Revenue Service (Income Tax) while others belong to the IRS, Customs and Indirect Taxes Service.

The EC, similarly, has appointed a team of three retired civil servants as special observers to assess the situation on the ground in Jammu and Kashmir before it takes a decision about holding the Assembly elections in the terrorism hit state.