A two day Chief Electoral Officers’ Conference of all States and Union Territories commenced in New Delhi today. It was inaugurated by Shri. A.K. Joti, Chief Election Commissioner of India and Shri. O.P. Rawat, Election Commissioner of India.

Addressing the Chief Electoral Officers of the States and Union Territories, Shri. A.K. Joti, Chief Election Commissioner stressed on the need of providing E-services to stakeholders and emphasised the requirement to develop E-Payment gateways for various election services of Election commission of India. He underlined the need for extensive training programmes on VVPAT as ECI has decided to conduct all future elections using VVPAT along with EVMs. CEC also stated that “SVEEP” be developed as core area of election management.

Shri. O.P.Rawat, Election Commissioner of India invoked all CEOs to avail the opportunity to share the experiences and good practices of each other and learn election management related issues from senior practitioners. He stated that all electoral practitioners must work together to reach the higher scale on electoral integrity with further strengthening Indian democracy.

Shri. Umesh Sinha and Sh. Vijay Dev, Senior Deputy Election Commissioners, Shri. Sandeep Saxena and Sudeep Jain, Deputy Election Commissioners, Shri Dilip Sharma and D Ojha, Director Generals along with other senior officers of the Commission also participated in the Conference by making presentations on pivotal issues like EVMs & VVPATs, Electoral Registration Officers’ Net, Electoral Roll, Systematic Voter Education and Electoral participation (SVEEP), Expenditure Monitoring, Social Media, Paid News and other issues.

The event is being organised by the Election Commission of India (ECI) at New Delhi on 18th and 19th August, 2017 to review performance as well as to explore new initiatives and improve the election management and voter experience.