EC to set up chair in Seshan's memory at poll-study institute

The Election Commission has decided to establish a visiting chair on "interdisciplinary approach to electoral studies" at Delhi-based IIIDEM to commemorate former chief election commissioner T N Seshan.

Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora made the announcement here on Saturday.

Seshan, who ruthlessly enforced the model code of conduct and led game-changing electoral reforms in the 1990s, died on November 10.

The chair, to be instituted at the Centre for Curriculum Development at the India International Institute of Democracy and Election Management (IIIDEM) in New Delhi from next year, will be mentored by another former CEC, N Gopalaswami, Arora said.

"T N Seshans enduring contribution to the cause of probity, transparency and integrity in various aspects of the electoral process has made his name synonymous with electoral best practices worldwide," Arora said, delivering a keynote address at Nirma University here.

The Visiting Chair programme will be for young academics in the fields related to electoral studies, he said.

The chief election commissioner also said in his speech that the "commission is committed to bring more reforms to ensure that the (electoral) process becomes more in sync with the times, the current technologies and enhanced voter participation".

"Recently, the concept of absentee voters has been made part of our process. We hope to have more than one qualifying dates for eligibility of voters. We have a large number of overseas population and we need to devise a mechanism to facilitate their participation in the electoral process," he said.