The election commission of India (ECI) has been working on a series of electoral reforms, and the agenda includes linking Aadhaar with the electoral roll, considering paid news and false affidavit as electoral offence/corrupt practice, better monitoring the role of print media and social media intermediaries, and more than one qualification date in a year for becoming elector.

The ECI held detailed discussions on various issues of the pending electoral reforms with the legislative department of the ministry of law and justice on Tuesday.

Chief election commissioner Sunil Arora, election commissioners Ashok Lavasa, Sushil Chandra and senior officers of ECI met Narayan Raju, secretary of the department, along with Rita Vashishth, additional secretary and other officers at the meeting.

While welcoming the law secretary and other officers, CEC Arora thanked the department for facilitating postal ballot facilities for PwD and electors of above 80 years and electors belonging to essential services by the recent amendment in the Conduct of Election Rules on ECI’s recommendation.

He also mentioned that there are more than 40 different proposals of electoral reforms which are pending for long and the ECI was discussing some of these proposals at Tuesday’s meet. “The Commission would like to have such meetings with the Legislative Department at regular intervals to pursue all such pending proposals,” he added.

Raju assured them that they were already examining these proposals.

Matters discussed during the meeting included, among other things,

* More than one qualification date in a year for becoming elector
* Aadhaar linkage with electoral roll
* Paid news and false affidavit as electoral offence/corrupt practice
* Print media and social media intermediaries to be covered under Section 126 of the Representation of People (RP) Act 1951
* Substituting the term ‘wife’ by ‘spouse’ in the RP Act 1951 to facilitate electoral registration to the spouse of women service officials in the category of service voter
* Amendment in Contribution Form.