logo
Two-day training by EC of booth levels officers in Bihar

Two-day training by EC of booth levels officers in Bihar

The Hindu23-04-2025
Election Commission of India on Wednesday (April 23, 2025) began a two-day training and capacity building programme for Booth Level Officers (BLOs) from Bihar, where Assembly elections are scheduled to be held later this year.
This is the third such batch of BLOs to be trained from Bihar. The group includes 229 BLOs, 12 Electoral Registration Officers (ERO) and 2 District Electoral Officers (DEO) from the State.
A specialized one-day training programme for the State Police Nodal Officer (SPNO) and Police Officers from Bihar was also held alongside, an official statement said.
The training programme was inaugurated by Chief Election Commissioner of India Gyanesh Kumar in the presence of Election Commissioner Dr. Vivek Joshi at the India International Institute of Democracy and Election Management (IIIDEM) in the national capital and was followed by an interaction with the participants.
The training is planned to familiarise the BLOs with their roles and responsibilities as per statutory framework so as to ensure error-free electoral rolls. They will also be trained in the IT applications designed to support their roles, the statement said.
This is the latest in the first phase of the ongoing physical training programmes at IIIDEM in which 555 BLOs from poll-bound States of Bihar, West Bengal and Assam and 279 Booth Level Agents (BLA-1s) of 10 recognised National and State political parties from Bihar have already been trained. These well-trained BLOs will form a corps of Assembly Level Master Trainers (ALMTs) to strengthen the entire network of BLOs nationwide.
The training of SPNOs and Police Officers from Bihar aims at improving coordination between election authorities and the police for enhanced electoral management, especially in the areas of law and order, vulnerability assessment, paramilitary forces (CAPF) deployment, and model code of conduct (MCC) enforcement, the ECI statement said.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

IAS Officers Slam Personal Attacks On CEC Gyanesh Kumar's Family After Spat With Rahul Gandhi
IAS Officers Slam Personal Attacks On CEC Gyanesh Kumar's Family After Spat With Rahul Gandhi

News18

time25 minutes ago

  • News18

IAS Officers Slam Personal Attacks On CEC Gyanesh Kumar's Family After Spat With Rahul Gandhi

Curated By : Last Updated: August 19, 2025, 23:42 IST Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. (PTI) The IAS fraternity has strongly condemned abuse and personal remarks against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and his family, following a tense confrontation between the Election Commission and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who has accused the poll body of stealing votes to benefit the BJP. 'We strongly condemn unwarranted abuse and personal attacks against Hon'ble Chief Election Commissioner Shri Gyanesh Kumar and his family. We urge everyone to maintain respect and decorum, acknowledging his dedicated service and significant contributions towards the nation," read a post by IAS Fraternity on X. We strongly condemns unwarranted abuse and personal attacks against Hon'ble Chief Election Commissioner Shri Gyanesh Kumar and his family. We urge everyone to maintain respect and decorum, acknowledging his dedicated service and significant contributions towards the nation. IAS Fraternity 🇮🇳 (@IASfraternity) August 19, 2025 The confrontation between two Constitutional position holders—the CEC and the LoP – began after Rahul Gandhi alleged 'vote theft" and irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls in the state. The Election Commission has repeatedly denied these 'baseless" accusations and called on Gandhi to sign an affidavit or apologise. ALSO READ: Can India's Chief Election Commissioner Be Impeached? The Law, Politics And Current Row In a departure from norms, the Chief Election Commissioner held a press conference to address Gandhi's 'Voter Adhikar Yatra', where he stressed that the Bihar SIR is aimed at removing all shortcomings in voter lists, while slamming political parties for spreading misinformation. In a tersely-worded speech, Kumar rejected as 'baseless" the allegations of double voting and 'vote theft", saying it was an insult to the Constitution. He also called on Rahul Gandhi to either sign an affidavit or apologise to the country for his claims of vote theft. Swipe Left For Next Video View all Meanwhile, the opposition parties, led by the Congress, said the Election Commission is not acting like an unbiased entity and is in the hands of officers who are taking sides. The parties also accused CEC Gyanesh Kumar of acting like a BJP spokesperson, saying he failed to answer their questions on the SIR exercise. On Sunday, Rahul Gandhi accused the ECI of 'stealing" elections in collusion with the BJP, claiming that attempts were underway to manipulate the Bihar Assembly polls through voter additions and deletions through the SIR exercise. Aveek Banerjee Aveek Banerjee is a Senior Sub Editor at News18. Based in Noida with a Master's in Global Studies, Aveek has more than three years of experience in digital media and news curation, specialising in international... Read More Aveek Banerjee is a Senior Sub Editor at News18. Based in Noida with a Master's in Global Studies, Aveek has more than three years of experience in digital media and news curation, specialising in international... Read More News india IAS Officers Slam Personal Attacks On CEC Gyanesh Kumar's Family After Spat With Rahul Gandhi Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Read More

The ‘living dead' of democracy: Has EC failed Bihar?
The ‘living dead' of democracy: Has EC failed Bihar?

India Today

time3 hours ago

  • India Today

The ‘living dead' of democracy: Has EC failed Bihar?

Birth certificate was among the 11 documents that citizens in Bihar were required to produce to prove their eligibility for inclusion in the voters' list under the Election Commission's (EC) Special Intensive Revision (SIR). For those seeking entry, the evidentiary bar was high. For those struck off, the bar was almost level officers (BLOs), the foot soldiers of the exercise, were not obliged to demand death certificates before declaring a voter deceased. Chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, on August 17, effectively conceded as much, noting that BLOs and booth level agents (BLAs)—the latter nominated by political parties—had 'verified' those deemed dead, those listed in more than one booth, and those marked as migrated. The admission laid bare the EC's unequal yardsticks: exacting standards for inclusion, and casual corroboration, non-documentary validation for more than two million names have been erased as 'dead', it remains unclear whether a single one of those fatalities was formally confirmed. This asymmetry recently took a surreal form in New Delhi, where Congress leader Rahul Gandhi sat across the table with seven residents of Bihar who, according to the draft rolls, no longer existed. Rahul remarked that it was the first time he had sipped tea 'with the dead'.The absurdity was complete: in Bihar, some of the living were marked as corpses while the truly departed lingered on the rolls, spectral citizens still capable of queuing patiently at polling stations in the upcoming assembly polls and thereafter. When the EC last month released the draft roll of Bihar's 72.3 million electors—their enumeration forms digitised and uploaded with bureaucratic flourish—it left unanswered a simple question: how were the deletions verified?Roughly 700,000 names were struck off as duplicates, a claim that can be tested against records. But 2.2 million voters were consigned to the 'deceased' and 3.5 million declared 'migrated'. By what verifiable mechanism? In practice, BLOs purportedly often relied on hearsay, consulting neighbours of the voters or the village sarpanch in question in lieu of imbalance was glaring. Citizens seeking inclusion were asked for birth certificates, ration cards, school records—a parade of proofs. Yet for deletions, a nod from a neighbour was often enough. Death could be presumed, migration guessed. Under deadline pressure, did officials wield discretion as evidence?The Supreme Court's recent order, instructing the EC to publish the names of all 6.5 million voters deleted from the draft list, was not mere transparency but a rebuke. The officials have uploaded the court has said Aadhaar, once dismissed by the EC, can be accepted for inclusion. By extension, it is likely to become the 12th document for those already on the draft rolls but lacking any of the other 11. Citizens wrongly marked 'dead' or 'migrated' may now file Form 6 and demand receipts from officials, who themselves face the larger truth is this: the EC failed Bihar. The failure was not just technical but temporal. The SIR was announced in June, with deadlines collapsing by July 25 and claims and objection to be submitted by September villages already disrupted by monsoon rains, officials were asked to verify millions of records in weeks. The task was Herculean, the deadline impossible. Errors were inevitable. The EC should have known. If a revision was necessary—and perhaps it was, for electoral rolls are never pristine—it should have been done months earlier, in quieter political Bihar received an exercise in haste masquerading as rigour. Citizens were held to the strictest standards to prove they were alive. To declare them dead required little more than a shrug. The result is a list that satisfies neither law nor common has long been caricatured as India's political laboratory. Once again, it has become a test case. If the EC stumbles here, in full public view, what might be happening in quieter corners of the Republic? Rahul's tea with 'the dead' in Delhi was theatre, but also metaphor. To sip with the 'living dead' was to confront the fragility of the rolls itself—the thin sheet of paper that separates democracy from election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar has said time remains for claims and objections. Any voter or party may challenge deletions until September 1. Yet one cannot help but ask: could this not have been done better, with less haste and more care? Until the final rolls are published, Bihar's democracy will remain haunted—not by its dead but by the living institutions sworn to protect the to India Today Magazine- EndsMust Watch

Bihar SIR: What the Supreme Court's interim order means for voter rights
Bihar SIR: What the Supreme Court's interim order means for voter rights

The Hindu

time4 hours ago

  • The Hindu

Bihar SIR: What the Supreme Court's interim order means for voter rights

The Supreme Court, in an interim order on Thursday (August 14, 2025), directed the Election Commission of India (ECI) to publish a booth-wise list of nearly 65 lakh electors who were excluded from the draft electoral roll released on August 1 as part of the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in poll-bound Bihar. A Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi ordered that the list must specify the precise reasons for exclusion, such as death, migration, or duplicate registration. The petitioners have argued that the poll body has failed to observe the basic principles of natural justice while carrying out the exercise. They have also questioned the 'hasty' manner of its implementation. What is the constitutionality of the SIR exercise, and does it risk disenfranchising voters? What are the implications of the interim order? To what extent does the order address the contentious debate over whether Aadhaar can serve as valid proof of identity and residence in the electoral process? Guest: Shahrukh Alam, advocate practising at the Supreme Court Host: Aaratrika Bhaumik Shot, produced and edited by Jude Francis Weston For more In Focus episodes:

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store