Anup Chandra Pandey stressed the need to develop Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) on the management of electoral rolls, polling management, electoral technology, control of disinformation, fake news, cyber security, and all related aspects for conducting free, fair, and transparent elections.
(File Photo)
Identifying polarisation, populism, and voter apathy as emerging challenges for Election Management Bodies (EMBs) globally, Election Commissioner Anup Chandra Pandey, on Tuesday, stressed the need for mutual cooperation, continuous engagement, and knowledge sharing among EMBs on a regular basis in a structured manner to address these issues.
He said there was a need to develop global standards and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) on the management of electoral rolls, polling management, electoral technology, control of disinformation, fake news, cyber security, and all related aspects for conducting free, fair, and transparent elections.
The election commissioner was speaking at the concluding session of a two-day international conference on ‘Role, Framework & Capacity of EMBs’ organised by the Election Commission of India.
Pandey said that though elections were key to democracy, the quality of functional efficiency of conducting polls by EMBs depended on their effectiveness in addressing challenges and maintaining independence. He urged all EMBs to strengthen democratic norms and processes and leverage all relevant platforms for collective action.
He called for efforts to bring more and more democracies on board in a manner that involved and engaged them in strengthening electoral democracy. Roles of the partner organisations needed to be redefined for more effective assistance to the needy EMBs for capacity-building, he stressed.
The first session of the conference – “Current challenges faced by the EMBs” – with respect to their role and framework to ensure ‘election integrity’ was chaired by the Electoral Commissioner of Mauritius. The session had presentations from election authorities in Mexico, Chile, Nepal, and Greece.
The second session on ‘Future Challenges’ was of the view that the election authorities needed to gear up to face the emerging challenges of digital technologies.
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