Ludhiana, Jan 11 (UNI) Punjab Election Watch (PEW), a ctizens' initiative towards clean politics, will inform the voters of Punjab about the social, economic, as well as criminal backgrounds of candidates, if any, as revealed by them in their affidavits.

'The affidavits will no longer gather dust in the offices of Deputy Comissioners, as the PEW will digitise and scrutinise them and make available to the voters the facts through the media'', Mr Trilochan Shastry, the founder member of the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), who has set-up PEW said at a media conference here today.

He said Chief Election Comissioner N Gopalaswami had assured the PEW delegation during his recent visit to Chandigarh in relation with the Punjab Assembly elections, that the affidavits would be made available for scrutiny to the organisation members.

Mr Shastry said the PEW will also highlight the discrepancies left in the affidavits with the sole aim of concealing information or twisting the facts. There was no need for any sort of authorisation for this purpose because the law entitles every citizen to know his candidate as well as his background, he added.

He said that PEW will also keep an eye on other election-related mal-practices and would inform the Election Commission on these.

There are two other major initiatives of PEW, one is to highlight errors in voter rolls and the other is to highlight electoral malpractices, he said. The organisation members will also meet Election Observers and bring to their notice instances of electoral malpractices including distribution of money, clothes and liquor to woe the voters, he said and added that attempts to intimidate the voters would also be brought to light.

UNI