A day before the crucial results of the Lok Sabha Election 2024, the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Monday highlighted the efforts made by the poll panel to conduct free and fair elections. This is the first time when the poll body held such a post-election, pre-result briefing.
Addressing the media, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar stressed the success stories of large engagements of elderly and female voters in the polling process and said India created a world record with 64.2 crore voters, including 31.2 crore women, participating in the Lok Sabha elections this year.
“We have created a world record of 642 million voters. This is 1.5 times the voters of all G7 countries and 2.5 times the voters of 27 countries in the European Union… Home voting facility introduced for the first in India’s general elections for 85+ years old and PwD voters. Participation of elderly voters who have nurtured democracy with their vote since independence is an achievement for ECI,” Kumar said.
On social media memes calling election commissioners ‘Laapataa Gentlemen’, Kumar said, “We were always here, never went missing.”
“Now memes can say the ‘Laapataa Gentlemen’ are back,” he said.
He noted that over 68,000 monitoring teams and 1.5 crore polling and security personnel were involved in the world’s largest electoral exercise and nearly four lakh vehicles, 135 special trains and 1,692 air sorties were used in conducting the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
“Only 39 repolls took place in the 2024 general elections as against 540 repolls in 2019,” he said.
The CEC further said that Jammu and Kashmir recorded its highest turnout in four decades at 58.58 per cent overall and 51.05 per cent in the Valley.
“Seizures of Rs 10,000 crore, including cash, freebies, drugs and liquor, were made during the 2024 polls as compared to Rs 3,500 crore in 2019… Over 90 per cent of 495 complaints of Model Code of Conduct violations disposed of during 2024 general elections,” he said.
He further said that EC issued notices to top leaders, FIRs were filed against many and top officials transferred to sanitise the poll process.
“All development work used to stop during MCC, EC gave permission within 48 hours of applications in 95-98 per cent projects…We have by and large controlled menace of deep fakes, AI generated synthetic content in 2024 general elections,” he added.
On preparations for result day, CEC said, “the entire counting process is absolutely robust.”
Read The Latest Updates On Lok Sabha Election 2024 Here.
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