EC’s fresh push for poll reforms

The Election Commission of India is mulling linking Aadhaar with electoral role, having more than one cut off date for annual registration of new voters, and making paid news and false affidavit as electoral offence.

These issues were discussed during a meeting on Tuesday between EC and the legislative department of ministry of law and justice along with various other proposals for electoral reforms.

According to Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sunil Arora, more than 40 different proposals of electoral reforms are pending since long and Commission is at present discussing only some of them. “Commission would like to have meetings with legislative department at regular intervals to pursue all such pending proposals,” he said after the meeting.

As part of reforms, the EC is also considering bringing print media and social media intermediaries under Section 126 of the RP Act 1951 and substituting the term 'wife' by 'spouse' in the RP Act 1951 to facilitate electoral registration of spouse of women service officials in the category of service voter and making amendment in Contribution Form.

Apart from CEC, election commissioners Ashok Lavasa, Sushil Chandra and senior law ministry officers Narayan Raju, secretary and additional secretary Rita Vashishth were present in the meeting.

In a significant move, the EC and law ministry had recently initiated postal ballot facilities for PwD and electors of above 80 years and electors belonging to essential services through amendment in the Conduct of Election Rules.

Meanwhile, nine working groups of ECI officials and over 20 Chief Electoral Officers submitted their recommendations to the commision. These groups deliberated on the learnings from the general elections to Lok Sabha and other elections held recently. They were asked to draw short term, medium-term and long term categorised actions for suggesting procedural or Rule or Law amending requirements for smooth conduct of elections.