The Election Commission is to take a decision in the next two to three days on visiting Bihar, Sunil Arora, Chief Election Commissioner said on Monday.
Speaking at an international webinar on ‘Issues, Challenges and Protocols for Conducting Elections during Covid-19: Sharing Country Experiences’, Arora said that Covid-19 exigencies and social distancing measures necessitate that the Election Commission revisits the state in which assembly elections have to be held before the end of November. It is only after reviewing all the arrangements for holding of elections in the state during this visit to Bihar that the Commission is likely to announce the schedule for holding of Assembly elections there.
The Commission has already announced that it will hold elections to vacancies for 64 Assembly seats in various states and one vacancy for the Lok Sabha along with the Bihar state elections.
Arora said the maximum number of electors at a polling station has been reduced from 1,500-1,000, and consequently, the number of polling stations has gone up by 40 per cent, from 65,000-100,000 for the Bihar elections due to the Covid-19 pandemic. These changes have huge logistics and manpower implications.
The CEC also noted that elections are due in the states of West Bengal, Assam, Kerala, Puducherry and Tamil Nadu in the first half of next year.