ELECTION COMMISSION BEGINS PREPARATIONS FOR 2022 ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS

Different political parties have already started their preparations for the Assembly elections of five states, that will start next year. Meanwhile, the Central Election Commission has also started brainstorming about its preparations for the upcoming elections. The Election Commission of India, on Tuesday, held a review meeting on advance planning for forthcoming elections with the Chief Electoral Officers of the five states: Goa, Manipur, Punjab, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh at Nirvachan Sadan.

The Election Commission has issued a press statement and said that the preliminary meeting held was focussed on various thematic issues including Assured Minimum Facilities (AMF) at the polling stations, ease of registration arrangements for voter facilitation, electoral roll, timely resolution of grievances, arrangements of EVMs/VVPATs, postal ballot facility for senior citizens (80+) and PwDs, Covid mitigation plan, training of polling staff, and extensive voter outreach amongst others.

Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra, in his address, said that transparency and impartiality are the hallmark of the election process. He added that issues and challenges may be different in each state but election planning needs to have a voter-centric approach and participative decision making involving all stakeholders.

CEC Chandra, while interacting with the CEOs, said that states should learn and adopt innovations and best practices in election management from the states where polls have occured or other States/UTs.

The CECs from the five states gave a detailed presentation on various aspects of conduct of election including health of electoral roll, availability of budget, manpower resources, planning, polling station arrangements, and IT applications, etc, the press statment said.