who to conduct elections in this Covid 19 situations essay
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Polling issues
Congress MP and former Union Minister Manish Tewari agreed that much of the campaign would have to shift to the digital sphere, but expressed more concern over the polling part of the electoral exercise.
“There has been much talk of developing software to hold polls digitally, and in the Atlantic Council (of which Mr. Tewari is a member), we did explore this, looking at the example of Estonia. The main question is never the technology, but the ways in which it can be subverted, and how to ensure the integrity of the process,” he said.
Mr. Tewari also expressed concern over the fact that a notified election to the Rajya Sabha was postponed due to the COVID-19 outbreak by the Election Commission of India when only polling remained.
Away from political parties, pollster Pradeep Gupta, who heads AXIS-My India, located the whole issue in two spheres: one is of campaign, which he said is not a huge issue as there are many ways of reaching out to the people, and the second is to devise technology to ensure that proximity is not a factor in polling.
“Our voters list is not updated, we were hoping that the new census exercise with its extensive use of technology would lead to a better set of data. I feel that to a large extent the connection between the voters list, Aadhaar number and mobile phones should be attempted. It stands at barely 30% now and needs to be extended,” he said.