Barwani collector introduces new electoral practices to accelerate poll process, mitigate electoral violence
MPSEC may recognise the innovations as the best practices
BHOPAL/ District election officer and collector of Barwani, Shivraj Singh has introduced new electoral practices in the ongoing panchayat polls to accelerate the entire election process -from casting to counting the votes, and mitigate electoral violence. Madhya Pradesh state election commission(MPSEC) may recognise the collector’s innovations as the best electoral practices in the state.
In the ongoing panchayat polls, it can mostly be seen that the voting process continues till the late evening and counting the votes takes the entire night at some places. The MPSEC has scheduled the polling time up to 3 pm. The panchayat polls are being conducted in three-tier, Gram panchayat, Janpad panchayat and Zila Panchayat.
Barwani collector Shivraj Singh told The Sun Today, “while reviewing the first phase of the polls, we found that the voting process continued till 11 pm and counting could complete till 12 am at some polling places where voters were more than 500. Keeping such a situation in mind, we decided to mull a strategy for the remaining two phases. which gave us a fruitful result and we conducted peaceful fair and free elections within a short span of time in the second phase.
When the collector reported the information of the second phase of panchayat elections to MPSEC they appreciated the practices and asked to send a presentation on it. The collector has sent the details of the new electoral practices to the MPSEC. According to sources, the SEC may consider collector’s innovations in the electoral process as the best practices in the state.
Long lines at the polling stations, slow voting speed and delays in counting may undermine the voting experience and cause electoral violence. To fix these polling experiences, the collector adopted a strategy to manage these experiences at various levels such as at training, booth, human, communication and polling materials.
A special training session for poll officers has been conducted in which the collector himself trained them. He shared many tips to increase the voting speed and improve poll station management through a demo.
The collector said that we listed those polling stations where more than 500 voters are enrolled and deployed additional employees from the reserved staff to maintain the voting speed and control the congestion. An officer has also been engaged as a campus in charge at every premise where more than two polling stations are set up, he also said.
In every block, a revenue officer has also been engaged to establish continued communication with the poll officer and monitor the poll speed, he added.
“I myself monitored deeply the whole election process at every point. After implementing these practices, we found that the election process including voting and counting had been completed by 10: 30 pm even after where voters’ loud was high”, Collector Singh added.
