-PTI In a landmark verdict, the Supreme Court on Friday held that citizens have right to cast negative vote rejecting all candidates contesting polls, a decision which would encourage people not satisfied with contestants to turn up for voting. The apex court directed the Election Commission to provide ‘none of the above options' at the end of the list of candidates in Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and ballot papers to allow voters...

-The Hindu The representatives of the recognised national and State-level political parties on Friday expressed satisfaction over the functioning of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT), developed by the Election Commission (EC) and made some suggestions for further improvement. The Commission said "the suggestions will be considered by the Expert Committee and the EC." Informed sources said the improved VVPAT could possibly be used for field...

-The Hindu When a political party puts up candidates with criminal charges, it results in the alienation of large sections of people from the political class and politics itself When the Election Commission of India turned 60 on January 25, 2010, The Hindu opened its lead editorial of January 29 with the words, “After overseeing 15 General Elections to the Lok Sabha, the ECI, in its diamond jubilee year, can with justifiable...

-Pratirodh.com Biometric data based 12 digit Unique Identification (UID)-Aadhaar Number linked welfare schemes is being bulldozed with 2014 elections in mind with the ulterior motive of altering voting behavior of the citizens by creating a ‘universal identity infrastructure’ linked to ‘unified payment infrastructure’.   Ahead of next parliamentary elections, with the launch of 21st crore UID-Aadhaar Number and Aadhaar Enabled Service Delivery (AESD) on October 20, 2012 contemptuously ignores Parliament, Parliamentary Committee,...

-PTI Anna Hazare and his team on Thursday met the Election Commission in a bid to raise the pitch for electoral reforms and demanded that the 'right to reject' option be included in Electronic Voting Machines. Hazare, along with his close associates Santosh Hegde, Prashant Bhushan, Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi, discussed the matter for about an hour with Chief Election Commissioner S Y Qureshi. According to Team Anna, the meeting was "very...