Then there’s the Model Code of Conduct which is a very important tool of monitoring and managing elections. It is not a law; it is a voluntary set of rules created by the political parties themselves in consultation with us which they have agreed to follow in letter and spirit. The Supreme Court, while hearing some petitions, had put a stamp of authority on it, directing the enforcement of the model code and we have zero tolerance in its enforcement.

•Vandita Mishra: The polls had a violent start and there was criticism that perhaps the Naxalite-affected areas should not have been clubbed together in the first phase.

This allegation is totally wrong. In fact we are very happy about the way we planned it. We decided to keep all the Maoist affected areas together in one phase, keeping in mind the movement of our own forces. They (the Maoists) can move faster than our forces as they know the area like the back of their hand. As you know, there are six to seven days between phases. Once a polling phase is over, the machines are moved first, then the forces are disengaged and they have to travel to the next phase. This gives them barely two days to study the terrain and do what we call ‘area domination’. We thought that if we conducted the polls in the Naxalite areas in phase one, we would be able to send our forces there at least a month in advance for them to dominate the areas. Since most Maoist areas have a very difficult terrain, we also kept the timing for voting till 3 p.m., instead of 5 p.m. to ensure that everyone returned from the polling booth to a safe area in daylight. Out of the 1,86,000 polling booths for the first phase, 71,000 polling booths were in Naxalite affected areas. And nearly 7,10,000 staff members whose routes, timings etc., were known to all beforehand, could be sitting ducks. In this scenario, apart from the unfortunate few deaths, we managed to conduct the polls quite successfully in the first phase as in the subsequent three phases.

... contd.