Star Campaigner
Context: Supreme Court stayed the Election Commision order revoking “star campaigner” status of Kamal Nath.
“Taking a serious note of the breach of “ethical and dignified behaviour”, the election watchdog had on had revoked the “star campaigner” status of the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister for repeated violations of the model code during campaign for the bypolls.
Who is a star campaigner?
- A star campaigner is a leader, who seeks vote for his party during the election.
- He or she can be a politician or even a film star.
- There is no strict law governing who can or cannot be made a star campaigner.
- It depends on the party whom to choose as the star campaigner for the election.
- It is a status that the political parties contesting an election give to certain big names who the parties feel can fetch more votes from people with special campaigning style.
For polls, how many star campaigners can be there?
- When the EC announces, poll dates for certain elections, it also issues issued guidelines for the Model Code of Conduct regulating poll campaign by them.
- As per the guidelines of the EC, a ‘recognised’ party can nominate a maximum of 40 star campaigners for a particular election.
- An unrecognised political party can nominate a maximum of 20 star campaigners.
Why star campaigners are needed?
- Political parties believe that voters will get attracted by the star campaigners and will vote to that particular party.
- Some other parties believe that start campaigners can fetch more votes than ordinary campaigners.
- However, it has a lot to do with poll expenditure as well. The EC keeps a tab on expenditure incurred by individual candidates during campaign Rs 70 lakh for most states in one constituency by each candidate.
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