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In a bid to enhance voter experience and streamline poll management, the Election Commission has launched 21 new initiatives over the past 100 days, officials said on Thursday. These measures, they pointed out, span procedural reforms, training programmes and stakeholder engagement. The measures have marked the first 100 days of the 26th Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, they noted. To improve voter access, the poll authority has revised the maximum number of electors per polling station from 1,500 to 1,200. Additional polling booths will be set up in densely populated areas such as gated communities and high-rise buildings. The Commission, they said, aims to ensure that no voter is required to travel more than 2 km to cast their vote. Voter information slips have been redesigned for clarity on the polling station number. As a significant boost to the convenience of voters, a mobile phone deposit facility will be set up at the entrance of every polling station. Booths se
Exit polls in Germany's national election Sunday show opposition leader Friedrich Merz's conservatives leading, with Alternative for Germany heading for the strongest showing for a far-right party since World War II. The exit polls for ARD and ZDF public television show Chancellor Olaf Scholz's center-left Social Democrats on track for their worst postwar result in a national parliamentary election, and expected to be in third place. The polls, issued right after the last polling stations closed, put support for Merz's Union bloc at 28.5-29 per cent and Alternative for Germany, or AfD, at 19.5-20 per cent -- roughly double its result from 2021. They put support for Scholz's Social Democrats at 16-16.5 per cent, far lower than in the last election. The environmentalist Greens, their remaining partners in the outgoing government after Scholz's three-party coalition collapsed in November, were on13.5 per cent. Out of three smaller parties, one the hard-left Left Party appeared certa