This story is from February 19, 2020

NEW DELHI: Nine working groups set up by EC to review various facets of general 2019 and suggest improvements for future polls, submitted their draft recommendations to the Election Commission on Tuesday.

The recommendations, based on the lessons learnt from polls to the Lok Sabha and four state assemblies held last year, will be studied by the commission and after due consideration and acceptance, these will be placed in the public domain for eliciting the view of all the stakeholders.

The commission had in June last year formed nine working groups comprising senior EC officials and state chief electoral officers to assess various facets of election process including electoral roll issues, polling station management, model code of conduct issues, voting processes & materials inventory, capacity building, IT applications, expenditure management, SVEEP and media interface as also electoral reforms.

The members of the working groups met at a two-day conference here to deliberate on the learnings from general election 2019. In his message to the gathering, chief election commissioner Sunil Arora complemented the officers for their pithy and cogent recommendations. He said that the commission would look into the recommendations of the working groups and put them in the public domain.

Election commissioner Ashok Lavasa advised the officers to make implementable recommendations. Election commissioner Sushil Chandra said the ultimate aim of the exercise should be to make the registration and voting experience pleasant for the voters. He said that while the groups have laboured to identify the existing gaps and way forward in electoral processes, CEOs should take due help of technology to streamline procedures for future.

