Political News: Top EC officials likely to brief Parliamentary panel on electoral reforms: Sources

Top officials of the Election Commission are likely to be called by a Parliamentary panel to brief it on electoral reforms, including remote voting, linkage of Aadhaar with voter ID card, and one uniform voter roll for all polls, sources said on Monday. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances and Law and Justice chaired by senior BJP leader Sushil Modi has also decided to deliberate upon the issue of e-courts and will seek an appointment with Supreme Court Judge D Y Chandrachud who heads the e-committee of the apex court.

After deliberating with members of the panel, Modi has decided to invite top officials of the poll panel and discuss with them remote voting, which allows anyone to vote from outside his or her constituency, and linking of Aadhaar card with voter ID card, which can do away with multiplicity of the cards voters need to show while going for voting, they said.

A discussion will also be held on various other electoral reforms planned by the EC, including singular voter list for the Lok Sabha, state assembly and panchayat elections.

The officials from the poll panel are likely to be invited in the first week of November.

Former Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora, who demitted the office earlier this year, had expressed hope that the concept of remote voting will see “the light of day” by the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Earlier this year, the poll panel had started a research project for enabling remote voting in consultation with IIT Madras and eminent technologists from IITs and other leading institutions.

The Supreme Court’s e-committee is the governing body charged with overseeing the e-courts project conceptualised under the National Policy and Action Plan for Implementation of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the Indian Judiciary, 2005.

E-courts is a pan India project monitored and funded by the Department of Justice, in the law ministry. Its vision is to transform the judicial system of the country by Information and Communication Technology (ICT) enablement of courts.