RESERVATION OF SEATS FOR WOMEN
- During the years, a consistent demand has been made for giving adequate representation to women in Parliament and state legislatures. Such a demand finds support in the 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution in the year 1992.
- There was a proposal to amend the Constitution and to provide for reservation in Parliament and state legislatures. In past, three Bills were introduced in Parliament that is in the years, 1996, 1998 and 1999 respectively, but due to one reason or the other, the bills could not be passed.
- Government introduced in the Rajya Sabha on 6th May, 2008 the Constitution (108th Amendment) Bill, 2008 seeking to provide that nearly 1/3rd of the seats shall be reserved for women in the House of People and Legislative Assemblies of States.
- The Bill was examined by the Department Related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice, and presented in its 36th Report to the Rajya Sabha in 2009.
- Thereafter, on the 9th March, 2010 the Bill was considered and passed by the Rajya Sabha and is now before the Lok Sabha for its consideration and passing.
ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES
- Starting from the experimental use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in 1982, it took more than two decades for the universal use of EVMs and during the General Elections to the Lok Sabha in 2004, EVMs were used in all polling stations across the country.
- The EVMs were developed jointly with two Public Sector Undertakings, i.e., BEL (Bharat Electronics Limited, Bengaluru) and ECIL (Electronics Corporation of India Limited, Hyderabad) in 1989.
- Since 1998, their repeated use proved to be an unqualified success. The first round scaling-up was done in the year 2000.
ELECTORS PHOTO IDENTITY CARDS
- The scheme of Electors Photo Identity Cards (EPIC) was started in August, 1993 with a View to preventing impersonation of electors and facilitating their identification at the time of poll and to eliminate bogus and fictitious entries from the electoral roll.
- An ‘Elector’ has been defined in the law, as a person whose name figures in the electoral roll and an EPIC can only be issued to a person who is an elector.
- In the second half of 1997, while taking up the summary revision of electoral rolls with 1st January, 1998 as the qualifying date, the Commission decided to computerise the electoral rolls.
- The Election Commission also decided to keep the parliamentary constituency as a unit for the purpose of identifying the relevant electoral roll.
- The Election Commission took a decision in February, 2000 for the elections to the Legislative Assembly in Haryana, by insisting upon the use of EPICs for identification of the voters. In case of voters who had not been issued EPICs, Commission, prescribed other means of identification which could be produced by the electors at the time of voting. Data showed that nearly 80% of the voters produced EPICS at the time of voting.
