Arunachal Citizens Right (ACR) chairperson Bamang Tago has asserted that the state can be ranked highest in the country in terms of poll expenditure.

Sharing the experiences of electoral practices of the state in the Sixth National Conference on Electoral and Political Reforms at Bhopal yesterday, Tago, who is also the Coordinator of the Arunachal Election Watch, stressed that there is an urgent need to create awareness amongst the villagers at the lowest level.

Tago alleged that booth capturing, massive rigging and impersonation during polling was a common practice particularly in rural areas of the state in presence of representatives from the Election Commission, who never reported such incidents to their higher authorities. “There is also assistive interference of bureaucracy during the elections, which makes the very objective of free and fair election a failure,’’ he said.’Money brings the ticket to fight an election, money buys the support to form a government, therefore earning money becomes the sole objective of the elected representative during the five year term,’’ Tago lamented, adding efforts taken by the Election Commission for electoral reforms is much below par than desired.

Attending the conference that began on Saturday, organised by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch (NEW), Chief Election Commissioner of India Navin Chawla, on the inaugural day, released a book ‘Lok Sabha 2009 Election Watch: A compendium of state election watch reports’.

The book contains analysis on criminal and financial details of candidates and winners of Lok Sabha 2009 Elections for all states and UTs of India.