Voters have right to know how parties plan to fund election freebies, says CEC Rajiv Kumar

Wondering why political parties announced “freebies” only in the run-up to polls, chief election commissioner Rajiv Kumar on Monday said they came with a huge “tadka” (garnish) of populism, making it difficult for whoever was voted to power to either roll out these sops or stop the ‘freebie’ culture. . I don’t know why one does not remember to make these announcements through five years (in between elections) but only in the last month of 15 days,” he said.