Procedural reforms, technology upgrade under way to strengthen election exercise, says EC official

The Hindu

a day ago

The Election Commission of India (EC) is in the process of implementing several technology-level changes and on-the-ground procedural reforms aimed at strengthening election integrity, boosting elector participation and improving voter convenience, said its Deputy Director P. Pawan on Wednesday, June 11, 2025.
While several improvements were targeted at electors, who were the building blocks of democracy, the EC has also initiated pan-India all-party meetings at the CEO/DEO/ERO level and interactions with the heads of national and State political parties, the deputy director at EC's media division said at an interaction with select media persons.
'This approach of proactively engaging with political parties is a paradigm shift,' Mr. Pawan said.
On the technology front, an upgraded digitisation effort to build an ECINET platform is under way to facilitate rapid dissemination of VTR (voter turnout) figures, other electoral data and statistical reports. It will feature an integrated dashboard that can replace at least 40 different apps/websites and provide all election-related information at a single point. The platform is being beta tested and is likely to be launched before the Bihar elections, expected later this year, Mr. Pawan said.
A new mechanism for unique Electoral Photo Identity Cards (EPIC) is also being put in place. This will largely eliminate duplication of EPIC numbers arising from increase in the proportion of voters that led to situations of different voters sharing identical alpha-numeric sequence. 'However, the instances of EPIC number duplication have been found to be minuscule,' Mr. Pawan said.
Meanwhile, the EC is also exploring modalities of EPIC-Aadhaar linkage to avoid duplication or abuse. Technical consultations are in progress in this regard.
According to Mr. Pawan, another measure was to break a nearly two-decade hiatus in conducting a special summary revision ahead of byelections scheduled in four places this month. 'While usually, these exercises are conducted annually, the law provides for undertaking a revision ahead of a byelection,' he said.
The other changes, among the set of 23 new initiatives launched since Gyanesh Kumar took charge as Chief Election Commissioner earlier this year, were to introduce mobile phone deposit boxes at polling stations and reduce the number of electors per polling booth from 1,500 to 1,200 per booth to ease crowding, the EC official said.
'The phone deposit facility follows an assessment that barring the device was a likely factor dissuading people turning out to vote,' the official added.
Another measure is to directly obtain particulars of death registration from the data base of the Registrar General to verify and update the electoral roll eliminating the need for the bereaved kin to submit Form 7 and to accentuate critical information in voter slips. The establishment of additional polling booths are envisaged in high-rises and residential colonies.
Structured capacity building workshops under the auspices of the India International Institute of Democracy and Election Management (IIIDEM) in Delhi have been initiated for booth-level agents of political parties with a priority on the States that would enter the election cycle next.
Booth-level officers are being assigned a standard photo id card while engaging in door-to-door visits. Also, a legal defence team is being constituted to disseminate outcomes of various writ challenges relating to the electoral processes via media platforms, he said.
P. Jawahar, Chief Electoral Officer, M. Adarsh, Deputy CEO and other Elections Department officials participated.