India’s experience of holding elections during the COVID-19 pandemic showed that other countries could go on with scheduled polls and not defer them, Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora said on Thursday.
Comment | Conducting elections during a pandemic
Citing the ongoing Bihar Assembly elections, of which the third and final phase of polling is on Saturday, Mr. Arora told members of the Association of World Election Bodies (A-WEB), at the inauguration of a virtual election visitors programme, that the Election Commission of India had prepared meticulously for the polls.
“There was no dearth of skeptics, cynics, extreme cynics, who were doing doomsday predictions for us,” he said.
Also read: Bihar Assembly Elections | Phase 1 sees 54% turnout
The elections had turned out to be leap of faith and “not a leap in the fire”. The turnout in the first two phases of polling had been higher than that in the 2015 Assembly elections for those constituencies and 2019 Lok Sabha election, he said.
“All EMBs [election management bodies] across democracies can be enthused enough from India’s foray into elections to pick up the gauntlet and organise elections as per original schedule and not defer,” he stated.
