MP polls: BJP completes baseline survey of voters, submits to EC

Bhopal, Sept 23: The Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan led- BJP government in Madhya Pradesh has completed a survey mandated by the Election Commission (EC) to understand perceptions and reasons of non-participation of registered voters in the election process, and submitted it to the state electoral office here.

"The information technology division, which has done the KABBP baseline survey, of this department has informed that the work (of survey) has been completed and all documents related to it have been submitted to Chief Electoral Officer, Madhya Pradesh," Directorate of Economic and Statistics said in reply to an RTI query.

The department, however, refused to give a copy of the baseline KABBP (knowledge, attitude, behaviour, belief and practices) survey of voters to RTI activist Ajay Dubey, who had filed the query.

The Election Commission had in January asked the chief electoral officers (CEOs) of poll-bound Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Mizoram, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh to get the baseline KABBP survey of voters done by May 30.

The CEOs of these states were asked to engage services of a suitable and competent institute or agency to carry out the survey with the approval of the Election Commission.

"The baseline survey was completed sometime in late August, much beyond the time limit given by the Election Commission. There is a lot of discrepancy. We had filed several RTIs to get its copy but repeatedly denied for one or another reason," Dubey alleged.

Assembly elections in the five states are due this year end.

He demanded that the result of the survey be put in the public domain for greater transparency.

The main objective of the survey is to understand the extent and level of knowledge, belief, perception, readiness, trends, factors, reasons of participation and non- participation of registered voters in the election process.

A copy of the survey form containing questions was provided to Dubey.

Some of the questions in the survey were -- What according to you are main reasons for not participating in election process? Did you have any security related concerns at the time of election?

Assembly elections in the five states are due this year end.

PTI