NEW DELHI, May 18:
Elections 2014 have received worldwide praise for the peaceful transition of power in India and their smooth conduct but do you know behind their execution there was a “quietly efficient” planning that started 18 months in advance.
The sheer size of the Indian electors is mind-boggling to most outsiders—830.5 million voters, 9,00,000 polling stations, 8,000 candidates across 543 Lok Sabha constituencies in the world’s largest democracy that demands involvement of men and machine of a scale unthinkable anywhere else in the world.
“This election has truly been a logistical achievement. Planning for this major event began over 18 months ago, and the Election Commission leadership was clearly focused on delivering an efficient, quiet and high quality election with minimum glitches,” says a top Commission source.
The largest size of poll staff was deployed in this election—6,69,000 poll officials across 543 constituencies to be precise drawn entirely drawn from the central and state bureaucracy.
“While the election is being applauded for its efficiency, it was fully conducted by the same bureaucracy that is often criticised for slowness and delayed decision making,” the source said.
Helplines were set up at the constituency level, state level and at Delhi headquarters to immediately organise raids and seize cash. This enabled seizures of cash of Rs.313 crore, 2.2 lakh litres of liquor valued at Rs.1,000 crore and 1.85 lakh kg of drugs.
For the first time in the Lok Sabha polls, the Commission operated an expenditure monitoring division headed by a senior officer of income tax department.
If you wondered why there should be nine long phases to
conduct the elections and whether forces cannot be made available for quick turnaround, here is the answer:
This time, by rotating forces across multiple phases, the Commission optimised the services of over 8,00,000 paramilitary personnel.
Such large number of troops had to be rotated across the length and breadth of the country nine times over the nine phases of the polls via Indian Railways.
Over 570 special trains were dedicated for election duty to rotate the troops. Additionally, over 50 helicopters were deployed on poll day duty, which made over 1,500 sorties.
The Commission also made innovative polling booth security management.
As against an isolated state election where it could provide 100 per cent paramilitary force deployment, in a general election the same forces are deployed across the country.
This makes the force availability limited to about 20-30 per cent of sensitive polling stations besides 100 per cent deployment in the Left Wing Extremism areas.
In the initial phases of this election, the Commission started taking the preferences of political parties in deploying the limited available paramilitary forces in various polling stations.
This enabled political parties to feel a sense of participation in security arrangements and went a long way in retaining faith in the security arrangements, the source said.
The greatest achievement of this election has been the highest turnout in the history of Indian elections. However, this has not been achieved overnight, says the source pointing to the fact that the last 23 Assembly elections had resulted in higher turnouts. In several cases the turnouts have made records. (PTI)
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