The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday, appointed fifteen Expenditure Observers in Punjab ahead of the June 1 scheduled Lok Sabha elections in the state. The move comes to ensure that parties comply with expenditure regulations during the campaign period, officials said.
Expenditure Observer is an officer appointed by the Central Government Services by the Election Commission of India to keep a close watch on the election expenditure of the candidates and to ensure that no inducements are offered to the electors during the entire election process for exercising their franchise.
Harshad S Vengurlekar has been appointed for Gurdaspur parliamentary constituency, Bare Ganesh Sudhakar for Amritsar, Anurag Tripathi for Khadoor Sahib, Madhav Deshmukh for Jalandhar (SC), and Pawan Kumar Khetan for Hoshiarpur, Punjab Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Sibin C said.
Similarly, Shilpi Sinha has been appointed for Anandpur Sahib, Pankaj Kumar and Chetan D Kalamkar for Ludhiana, and Akhilesh Kumar Yadava and Nandini R Nair for Bathinda constituency, he said.
Additionally, Anand Kumar has been designated for Fatehgarh Sahib, Manish Kumar for Faridkot, Nagendra Yadav for Ferozepur, Amit Sanjay Gaurav for Sangrur, and Meetu Agarwal for Patiala as expenditure observers.