Kickstarting the advance planning for the forthcoming round of Assembly elections due early next year, the Election Commission on Wednesday held a review meeting with the chief electoral officers of the five states—Goa, Manipur, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh—that go to the polls.
The preliminary meeting, held at the Nirvachan Sadan in Delhi, focused on various thematic issues, with Covid mitigation plan being one of them. The Commission had during the Assembly elections earlier this year faced flak for alleged flouting of COVID-19 protocol during electioneering.
The meeting also saw discussion on issues such as providing assured minimum facilities at the polling stations, ease of registration arrangements for voter facilitation, electoral roll, timely resolution of grievances, arrangements of EVMs and VVPAT, postal ballot facility for voters who are over 80 years of age and categories, training of polling staff and voter outreach.
According to a statement from the Commission, Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra said in his address at the meeting that transparency and impartiality are the hallmark of the election process. He said that while the issues and challenges may be different in each state, election planning needs to have a voter-centric approach and there must be participative decision-making involving all stakeholders.
He emphasised on the need for rationalisation of polling stations keeping in view of the pandemic and said all booths must have the basic facilities and infrastructure. He also said that logistical challenges in the implementation of postal ballot facility to senior citizens and others need to be identified and resolved.
Chandra said the states that go to the polls next year should learn and adopt innovations and best practices in election management from the states where elections have already been held.
Election Commissioner Anup Chandra Pandey said that periodic and comprehensive monitoring on each aspect of elections must be done by the CEOs of the poll-going states. He highlighted the need to activate the ground-level election machinery in the five states to start the preparations for the forthcoming elections.
