Bhopal: India is the only country where everyone accepts election verdicts, says OP Rawat

Bhopal(Madhya Pradesh): Former chief election commissioner of India Om Prakash Rawat said that India is the only country where everyone accepts the election verdict. Rawat was addressing a seminar on “Indian electoral system in context of world” organised at Madhav Sapre Museum as a part of a celebration series of 38th anniversary of the museum in Bhopal.

There are countries in the world where the situation is totally different and the situations like civil war are very common, and some of such incidents are being reported in the last few years, said Rawat.

Making a remark on ‘one nation one election’ he said it is possible to conduct election of national assembly and state assembly together, only what is required is amendment in the Constitution. Further he said that earlier the country has witnessed four such elections.

Speaking on Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) and ballot paper, he stated that EVM machines are far more effective and secure. It is easy to tackle the situations like booth capturing with the use of EVMs and point of errors is also negligible in EVM and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT), he said.

Further he said, less voter turnout in state assembly elections is due to duplicacy in the voter list especially in northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, people here are less vigilant towards updating the list.

He said in 2018 , around 40 lakh duplicate names were found in voter list in MP, out of which 38 lakh names were eliminated.

In order to increase the voter turnout, public awareness is important for which the Election Commission of India is running various campaigns.