Page 192 - LECTURETTE TOPICS eBOOK

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8. To check that no political party is trying directly or indirectly to influence
the votes in their favour.
9. To notify the public about election dates and various polling stations.
10. To send notices to defaulting parties and initiate an action.
11. To count the votes and ensure transparency.
• Presently, the Election Commission of India has one Chief Election
Commissioner and two Election Commissioners. The Election commissioners
further have Deputy election commissioners, secretaries and so on. It has a
secretariat at new Delhi with 300 officials.

Reforms initiated
• It is the Election Commission of India that introduced Electronic Voting
Machines (EVMs) to ensure that the voting is done in an unbiased manner.
• The EPICS that is Electoral Photo Identity Cards were made mandatory by
2004 elections.

• Introduction of VVPAT that is a Voter-verified paper audit trail in 2014 in eight
Lok Sabha constituencies.
• Adding None of the Above (NOTA) option to EVMs. In 2014.
• In 2015 Photo electoral rolls on EVMs that is photographs of the candidates
on voting machines was introduced.
• The Election commission started its site eic.nic.in The site has various forms,
training material, political parties detail, voter education channel, eci
newsletter, details about nearest polling stations etc.

Recent Issues

• The polling percentage in India is still not 100%. In 2014, the polling
percentage was only 66.38%.
• The political parties still use religion and caste as tools to fill their vote banks
and the Election Commission has not been able to do much in this regard.
• With the introduction of RTI, a lot of complaints are received against the
improper conduct of elections.

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