EC ready to hold national, state polls simultaneously: Zaidi

India's Election Commission is prepared to simultaneously hold general and state assembly polls provided there is a consensus among allpolitical parties and constitutional amendments to this effect, Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi has said.
"As a commission, this is our recommendation to the Law Ministry that elections in the country can be held together for bothstate assemblies as well as Lok Sabha," Zaidi told PTI here.
"To conduct these elections simultaneously we would need certain logistic arrangements in terms of procurement of more electronic machines, hiring of temporary workers, and staggering the election dates," said Zaid, who was here to attend theInternational ElectionVisitors programme on theinvitation of the Australian Election Commission.

"We have made a similar recommendation to parliamentary committee which examines this issue and the committee has also given their suggestion that the issue requires lot of debate across all political parties as the Constitution have to be amended as several stateswould have to be brought forward while some have to be moved backwards," he said.
"We are on board with our proposalthat elections can be held together provided there is consensus,unanimity of opinionamong the political parties and alsothere are amendments in the Constitution," the CEC added.
TheInternational ElectionVisitors programme was held here to expose the 19 visitingcommissioners from the globeto the Australianelectoral system.

The commissioners weregiven familiarisation programme tounderstandthe electionprocessesand to internationalise the partnership among them.

"We were impressed with the simplicity of the Australian electionprocess, thetransparency,theamount of trust that is placed on a voter here, cooperation with political parties and the way the electioncampaigns are carried out," the CEC said.
Asked what India can imitatefrom Australian election systems orprocesses, Zaidi said the Commission is looking atexaminingthepostal ballot facility expansion for thevoters.
"We have small numbers right now who areallowed forpostal ballots but we will have to examine this if we can expand this for other voters," he said.
Zaidi also said theCommission was encouraging theNRI voters to register themselves online to be a part of the electionsback home.

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Zaidi said the commission was also working towards electronic postal ballot facility forNRIs which would enable them to vote without being present in India.
"We are also exploring at the ministerial level that if we can place these ballots boxes in some commissions/Indian embassies where these postal ballots can be dropped and transported back to India by quickest means," Zaidi said.
The work is also underway for domestic migrants and acommittee was set up to examine if thesimilar facilitycan be extended tothem, he said.
"The report for domestic migrants is also ready and now both the reports (For NRIs and domestic migrants) will be considered by the law ministry which will pave the way for aresolution," Zaidi said.