After the General Elections of 2019, the Election Commission of India took up the challenging task of improving elections, election rules, processes and administration across the country. Now it has invited feedback from citizens on various recommendations it has made. To make it easy, NextElection has analyzed the recommendations and created a simple survey to help citizens provide their feedback. All responses received will be collated and submitted to ECI without your personal details.

We believe that this public consultation is a very important one. As stakeholders in the future of this country, you must take the opportunity to share your feedback and suggestions.

Background

After the General Elections of 2019, the Election Commission of India took up the challenging task of improving elections, election rules, processes and administration across the country. It set up Working Groups headed / coordinated by senior Election Commission officials and various Chief Electoral Officers from different states who collated inputs from various sources, including best practices from other countries and have made recommendations that may change the way elections are conducted in India.

General Elections, 2019 witnessed a number of innovative measures including dedicated focus on accessibility at every polling station, providing dedicated transport facilities to PwD electors, designing targeted SVEEP materials for awareness and ethical participation of voters, launching c-vigil app to empower citizen for reporting against any malpractices during elections, using various ICT applications for ease of processes, creating unique Voluntary Code of Ethics for use of Social Media during elections, and making the elections as "Desh Ka Mahatyohar", which helped in the highest voter participation of 67.4% in Indian Electoral History. Participation of women voter reached at the record high of 67.18%. First time, ETPBS was used for the Service Voters across the country and the number of service electors rose to 18 lakhs.

After this unprecedented electoral participation, Election Commission has decided to focus on consolidation of all the steps and measures and incorporation of all the learnings to further improve the electoral administration. Accordingly, in June, 2019, Election Commission constituted Working Groups on various aspects of electoral management for these purposes. Each of these Working Groups is headed/coordinated by Secretary General [Sr. Deputy Election Commissioner/Deputy Election Commissioners/Director Generals from the Commission and consists of various Chief Electoral Officers from different states. Working Groups collated inputs from the field, analyzed these inputs in the context of existing legal and institutional frameworks, and suggested pathways for future to add value to the electoral process in the country. Working Groups undertook the study of related provisions from other election management bodies from the globe and after taking all inputs into consideration, made the recommendations to the Commission.

Based on these recommendations, Commission has decided to place main recommendations of Working Groups in public domain for inviting comments/suggestions on these recommendations from the citizen and stakeholders.