Bihar Chief Electoral Officer H R Srinivasa said the Election Commission has established a three-tier security system for strong rooms (housing the electronic voting machines) and the counting centres. The inner core is being guarded by the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs), then there is the Bihar Military Police (BMP) and then the district police, he told reporters.
The measures include an information search prompt with the Election Commission of India (@ECISVEEP) and State Election Commissions to provide reliable information around the elections, a custom emoji to encourage participation, a series of pre-bunks and debunks to tackle election-related misinformation, and a youth discussion series titled #DemocracyAdda aimed at voter literacy and civic participation among young Indians for the upcoming elections.
As round one of the seven-phase Lok Sabha election began in 91 constituencies across the length and breadth of India, from the hills of Kashmir to the islands of Andaman and Nicobar, reports of unrest and irregularities cast shadows over the world's biggest poll process.
The announcement came days after it issued a formal direction that VVPAT will be used at polling stations in all future elections where polls are held using EVMs.
The commission issued letter of intent to ECIL and BEL -- both PSUs -- on Friday, two days after the Union Cabinet cleared its proposal to buy 16,15000 voter verifiable paper audit trail units at an estimated cost of Rs 3,173.47 crore.
The voter turnout in DUSU polls on Thursday was recorded at 39.90 per cent, over four percentage points down from the last year.
Modi targeted Congress's president-elect Rahul Gandhi, saying he was born with a "golden spoon" and has not seen poverty.
The chief minister has lost her cool twice in the last few weeks over people chanting 'Jai Sri Ram' at some places in the state while her motorcade was passing through.
The EC received complaints from five places that EVMs were connecting to external devices via bluetooth, but after inquiry, it was found that there was 'no substance' in the complaints.
The final phase saw voting in all 13 seats of Punjab and an equal number of seats in Uttar Pradesh, nine in West Bengal, eight seats each in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, four in Himachal Pradesh, three in Jharkhand and the lone seat Chandigarh.
After barring Assam minister Himanta Biswa Sarma from campaigning in the assembly polls for 48 hours, the Election Commission has also transferred his brother and Goalpara Superintendent of Police Sushanta Biswa Sarma from the district.
The poll panel had ordered for 67,000 additional paper trail units in 2015, out of which 33,500 have been supplied, according to the law ministry.
7,06,252 people or 1.7 per cent of the voters opted for the option whereby they preferred not to vote for any candidate while exercising their democratic right.
In the video, Scindia is heard saying, "My people of Dabra, raise your hand and make your fist to convince (state chief minister) Shivraj Singh and me, make us believe that you will press the 'hand' button on November 3."
Rediff.com's Bikash Mohapatra, who is in the US to cover the presidential election, finds out that the American voter does not really trust the electronic voting machine.
Seventy-one parliamentary constituencies spread across nine states voted in the fourth phase of Lok Sabha elections.
The apex court said that a debate on polls reforms can only take place after the election process in the state is over.
They said this was preliminary voter turnout and the final figure may cross 80 per cent as electoral fate of 301 candidates were locked in EVMs which will be opened on March 10 for counting.
'I know people will say I am raising this issue because I have lost. There have been a lot of complaints about the electronic voting machines. There is a view that the machines were defective. 'When advanced countries like Japan and the US have discarded the use of these machines and gone back to using ballot papers, the Election Commission should take a fresh look at this,' former Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot tells Anita Katyal.
This time however, the poll panel did not share the overall polling percentage at its briefing.
He also said the Bihar chief electoral officer has already responded to everything. The EC held four press conferences on counting day on November 10 to respond to various aspects of the process, Arora pointed out.
When almost the entire political class was engrossed in the Bihar polls, the Congress shahzada was holidaying in a hill station. As the Bihar contest and other by-elections have shown, a large number of states have become Congress-mukt, fulfilling the Hindutva brigade's dream, notes Amulya Ganguli.
A voter turnout of 72.14 per cent was recorded in Assam till 5 pm on Saturday in the first phase of assembly elections in the state, the Election Commission said.
Allaying all doubts on the possibility of Electronic Voting Machine tampering, Chief Election Commissioner Navin Chawla on Tuesday said the machines used in India are stand-alone machines and cannot be manipulated.
Banerjee also alleged that the BJP is manipulating electronic voting machines to increase its vote share.
Former Chief Election Commissioner T S Krishnamurthy has pitched for single-phase elections and substantially curtailing public campaigning time in future polls.
Branding Trinamool Congress rebels as 'traitors' like Mir Jafar, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday took a swipe at the Bharatiya Janata Party for fielding the turncoats in the polls leaving saffron party old-timers shed tears.
The run-up to the polls, which should have been a humdrum affair, became a cause celebre after it was marred by violence, arrests, sit-ins in far-away Delhi and a Supreme Court intervention asking officials to ensure peaceful polling.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said if the Congress had formed an alliance with the Janata Dal-Secular before the election, the results would have been different.
India has provided 1,935 electronic voting machines to Bhutan for the country's second national elections to be held on Saturday.
The Congress is banking on decisions like reducing electricity tariff and fuel prices, taken during current CM Charanjit Singh Channi's 111-day tenure.
On Monday, the TMC leader had alleged that the returning officer of Nandigram did not order recounting of votes even after she demanded it as he feared for his life.
The clearance to the proposal of "procurement of VVPAT units" was given by the Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi after a brief discussion. The EC has sought Rs 3,174 crore in all for procuring over 16 lakh paper trail machines to cover all polling stations in the country.
Over 84 lakh voters in West Bengal will decide the political fate of 283 candidates on Thursday, when 35 assembly constituencies go to polls in the eighth and final phase, amid a raging second wave of Covid-19.
Did we miss the DeepState's Brazil Model in action in India in 2004 and 2009, asks Rajeev Srinivasan.
'Don't forget the BJP in the last election almost doubled its vote.' 'Even if they were not traditional BJP supporters, they were convinced about Mr Modi.' 'If the voter perceives that Mr Modi has performed well and he reinforces it, they will vote for him.' 'Otherwise, they won't.'
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Returning officer of Kunkuri Assembly constituency in Chhattisgarh has served a notice on senior Congress leader and former chief minister Ajit Jogi for llegedly violating the poll code by misleading tribal voters over functioning of EVMs when they cast their vote.
Polling was held for over hundred civic bodies in Punjab on Sunday amid stray incidents of skirmishes at some places.
The Chief Election Commissioner pointed out that the exercise involved nearly 7.3 crore voters and over 1.06 lakh polling stations.
The Sikkim Democratic Front got 15 seats in the hill state, Sikkim Krantikari Morcha, which came into being in 2013, bagged 17 seats, one more than required for a majority in the 32-member assembly.
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