Page 99 - Conducting Elections during COVID-19

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d. Prohibition on gatherings - political included.
e. Strict enforcement of social distancing norms.

f. Recommendation with regard to sanitisation and the other preventive measures.
g. Treatment / processing of COVID – 19 infected cases.
h. Quarantine – mandatory & otherwise &, the related protocols [nos. of days to be held etc].
2.3 The ECI [which is empowered under Article 324 of the Constitution of India, to conduct/ensure
free & fair elections], on March 24 2020 came to an assessment that in the above circumstances

which had created uncertainty on account of public health and a continued public health
emergency of worldwide proportion, did not provide a conducive ground / basis to go ahead with
the polls. The Commission had also obtained inputs from Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) and it
found a considerable variation in norms of containment and processing of COVID-19 positive
cases, [including the quarantine period, discharge protocols], curfew timings, border lockdown,
in the State specific announcements under the Pandemic Act.

2.4 The above was the core basis of the initial decision of deferment of March 24 2020 and was
so stated in the Press Note of 24.03.2020. Commencing 21.04.2020, the ECI examined
worldwide practices – including the National Elections in Korea, to work on possible strategies
and approaches to conduct the deferred elections. Accordingly, through detailed background
analysis and materials collated from an analytical perspective, the assessment and focus was on
2 distinct axis viz:
(a) Normative i.e. whether to conduct polls under the compliances needed for COVID-19
containment - any rule or legal provision or ECI’s own instructions/ precedent needed to be
changed- an issue which became relevant, as the constraint of R68 (CoER) i.e. whether a
Postal Ballot can be issued after the date of withdrawal, was manifest.
(b) Practical / steps on the ground i.e. whether procedures & instructions already in place could
be dovetailed to host the compliance of COVID-19 containment guidelines. Thus, whether
the compliances like social distancing, preventive measures, control of numbers etc. could
be achieved by simple re-engineering the person, process and timeline flow at the polling &
counting locations?

2.5 With effect from May 2020 – the NEC guidelines started listing the steps for “phased opening”
of the lockdown. Thus from May 20 2020 – all stakeholders’ CEOs were contacted on video
conference. Detailed interactions were held with inputs from the CEOs on the following core
framework.

a. Electors – quarantined, infected, suspected & hospitalised – how to inventorise & follow the
dynamic facts on the ground?
b. Polling Station – flow of person & process, layout, introduction of containment barriers,
incident response etc.
c. Counting Centres – flow of person & process, layout, introduction of containment barriers,
incident response etc.