Ranchi: With the Lok Sabha polls round the corner, the state election commission SEC ) here, which is in no way responsible for conduct of the upcoming election, is facing a peculiar problem of receiving hundreds of unsolicited mails, including complaints, grievances and requests, giving the commission’s officials a tough time of late.The commission’s officials on Saturday said while parliamentary and assembly polls in the state come under the jurisdiction of the Election Commission, which delegates its powers to the chief electoral office , Jharkhand, the urban and rural civic body elections are solely conducted by the SEC.Notwithstanding the jurisdiction, the officials rued that mails, both postal and electronic, come from various quarters during both the elections and pose a challenge to them.Talking to TOI, SEC secretary Sangita Lal said, “On an average, we get three to four communications both from public and government departments ever since the Lok Sabha polls were announced. Our mail boxes are virtually flooded with complaints over model code of conduct, applications seeking permission for various activities or simply applications seeking data under the Right to Information Act, all concerning the general election. Initially, we didn’t bother much and were only diverting those communications to the department concerned ( CEO , Jharkhand), but this increasing trend is worrying us.”Lal said a majority of the mails are sent by government departments, seeking permission for floating tenders or inquiring whether specific schemes and projects come under model code of conduct or not.“We understand when a commoner sends such communications, it could be due to his or her lack of knowledge on election-related procedures, but we are surprised when many state officials, cutting across government departments, are equally ignorant about the role of CEO’s office and the SEC,” remarked Lal, adding that her office is currently busy writing to each department in this regard.She added, “We are in the process of sending letters individually to every government department informing them that everything related to the general election be directed to CEO Jharkhand’s office and not to us. Let’s see, how far it works.”

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