Haryana Chief Electoral Officer, Sh. Pankaj Agarwal said that the Election Commission of India has introduced 18 major initiatives aimed at improving the efficiency, transparency, and inclusivity of the electoral process. These measures will strengthen key areas including voter convenience, participation of political parties, procedural reforms, legal framework, capacity building of election staff and internal operations of the Commission.
These changes are expected to benefit voters, stakeholders, and political parties across Haryana.He said that one of the key initiatives is that the maximum number of voters at each polling station will now be limited to 1,200. Similarly, more polling stations will be set up in multi-storey society buildings, colonies. To keep the voter list updated, death registration data will now be automatically verified and received directly from the RGI’s database.
He said that voter information slips will also be made more user-friendly. Voter serial numbers and part numbers will now be displayed more prominently. All India All Party Meetings were held at CEO, DEO, ERO levels. 4,719 meetings were held by the Election Commission with political parties across the country in which more than 28,000 representatives of political parties participated.
These included representatives from major national and state-level parties such as the Aam Aadmi Party, Bharatiya Janata Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, Communist Party of India (M), and National People’s Party. Capacity-building programmes for booth-level agents of political parties from Bihar, Tamil Nadu, and Puducherry were also organised at IIIDEM, New Delhi, where their roles and responsibilities were explained.
A new integrated dashboard called ECINET has also been launched which aims to provide all services at one place for all stakeholders. This will combine the services of over 40 apps/websites into a single platform to serve voters, political parties, and candidates with complete information and services in one place. The issue of duplicate EPIC numbers has been resolved, and a new system has been introduced to ensure each number is unique, he added.
He further said that, 28 stakeholders have been identified in the entire process of preparing the voter list and conducting elections, which include voters, election officers, political parties, candidates and others, which are based on the Representation of the People Act 1950 and 1951, the Registration of Electors Rules (1960), the Conduct of Elections Rules (1961), and the ECI from time to time.
Training presentations are being prepared for each of these stakeholders based on the Acts, Rules and guidelines of the Commission.Sh. Agarwal said that Booth Level Officers (BLOs) will now be issued standard photo ID cards. Under a capacity-building initiative at IIIDEM, over 3,000 booth-level supervisors have already been trained, and more than 1 lakh BLO supervisors will be trained over the next few years.
He said that training programmes for SMNOs and MNOs were also held at IIIDEM, with participation from all 36 States and Union Territories. To improve operational efficiency, biometric attendance has been implemented, and the Election Commission has started using e-Office systems for operationalization.
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