SHILLONG: On completion of one year of Chairmanship of the Association of World Election Bodies (A-WEB), the Election Commission of India, on Monday, hosted an international webinar on ‘Issues, Challenges and Protocols for Conducting Elections during COVID-19: Sharing Country Experiences’.
The webinar was an occasion for democracies across the globe to come together and share experiences of conducting elections during COVID-19.
Last year, India had taken over as chairmanship of A-WEB for 2019-2021 during the 4th General Assembly of A-WEB held in Bengaluru.
Inaugurating the webinar, the Chief Election Commissioner of India and Chairperson, A-WEB, Sunil Arora, spoke about the “tough predicament” faced by Election Management Bodies across the world, besides, whether and how to hold scheduled elections in a state of public health emergency.
Arora mentioned that elections in India pose formidable challenges on account of large electorate, geographical and linguistic diversity besides differing climatic conditions. Explaining the impact of COVID-19 on elections, Arora highlighted how COVID-19 exigencies and social distancing measures necessitated a revisit of ECI’s extant instructions.
The maximum number of electors at a polling station was reduced from 1,500 to 1,000, and consequently, the number of polling stations jumped by 40 per cent, from 65,000 to 1,00,000. These changes have huge logistics and manpower implications. CEC mentioned that the Commission would take a decision within the next two to three days, on visiting Bihar.
Over 120 delegates from 45 countries across and four international organisations — International IDEA, International Foundation of Electoral Systems (IFES), Association of World Election Bodies (A-WEB) and European Centre for Elections — participated in the webinar.