The Election Commission of India (ECI) has started preparations for assembly polls in Rajasthan, Mizoram, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Madhya Pradesh — which are only a few months away — and the Lok Sabha polls that will be held less than a year from now.
Speaking to News18, an official said the ECI will first focus on the assembly polls in these states.
How does the ECI prepare for elections?
The initial step of conducting any election in India is First Level Check.
“For every election, be it assembly or Lok Sabha or even by-elections, a first level check is conducted. It is done about four months before the assembly polls and six months before the Lok Sabha elections,” the official said.
Further, for bypolls, first level checks are conducted within a month of occurrence of vacancy. “The first level check has to be completed three months in advance before the tentative announcement of polls,” they added.
As part of the first level check, the election body conducts a series of actions, including cleaning and maintenance of machines and mock polls.
District election officers are responsible for these first level checks and these activities are carried out in a controlled environment in the presence of representatives of political parties. This space is fully barricaded and sanitised by the police.
The checks are conducted in spacious, well-lit and well-ventilated halls. Further, no mobile phones and cameras are allowed in these halls.
Cleaning of machines
Among the initial steps for the preparations of polls are cleaning of machines and removal of address tags, ballot papers, any superscriptions and earlier poll data from the Ballot Unit (BU), Control Unit (CU) and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT).
Further, engineers of Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) and Electronics Corporation of India Ltd (ECIL), the PSUs that manufacture the VVPATs, inspect the units for any damage or breakage.
The functionality of the BUs, CUs and VVPATs are also checked in the process. Later, symbols are loaded in these machines.
Complete diagnostic tests of these BUs, CUs and VVPATs are conducted and those found defective are kept aside and sent for repairs.
Mock Polls
After checking of machines is completed, a mock poll is conducted. “Casting of six votes against each of the 16 candidate buttons is done in these mock polls. These results are analysed and later the data is cleared. This is done for each EVM and VVPAT,” the official explained.
The representatives of political parties are allowed to pick machines for some share of the mock tests and they can pick machines themselves.
Security measures post first-level checking
After the first-level checking is done, the EVMs are stored in strong rooms with round-the-clock security until elections.
Among the other measures necessary for security, CCTVs at the entry point of the strong room and fire extinguisher and fire alarms are made mandatory.
The Lok Sabha polls are slated to be held around March 2024 while the assembly polls are likely to be held between October and November.
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