By IANS
Ahmedabad : A motivated task force is the key to a free and fair election as exemplified by this year’s assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Chief Election Commissioner N. Gopalaswamy said here Thursday.
Holding elections in a country like India was a complex challenge but they can be managed successfully with the existing available resources, he is understood to have emphasised at his meeting with the faculty and students of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A).
Gopalaswamy, who flew down from New Delhi to deliver a talk on “Delivering democracy in India – the experience of the Election Commission”, pointed out that the Uttar Pradesh assembly poll concluding in May was conducted in such a manner that it was virtually free of any violence, booth capturing and the power of mafia.
After the talk, the chief election commissioner had a closed-door interactive session with the faculty and the students.
Gopalaswamy, who will return to New Delhi Friday, is expected to be back here on Oct 4 in connection with the forthcoming Gujarat assembly elections, due by December.
This is the second time a chief election commissioner interacted with the IIM faculty and students. Earlier, former CEC T.N. Seshan was invited when he introduced sweeping electoral reforms in the country in the late 1980s.
Anil Gupta, the IIM-A professor who had taken the initiative to invite Gopalaswamy, told IANS that both faculty and students learnt from the chief election commissioner the complexities involved in carrying out elections in India.
It was truly a management challenge, he added.
In the context of Indian social and political environment, the interaction with Gopalaswamy turned out to be a valuable learning exercise, Gupta noted.