UP: Panchayat polls early next year, state poll panel sets ball rolling

LUCKNOW: It’s official now, the three-tier panchayat elections won’t be held this year, but in mid-2021 and administrators would take over rural governance bodies once their term expires in December.
State Election Commission on Tuesday set the ball rolling by releasing its voter revision calendar, which schedules the final list for December 29, while the term of panchayats ends on December 25.The voter list verification will be conducted between October 1 and November 12 for polls to 60,000 gram panchayats, considered a semi-final to the mother of all elections in early 2022.
After revision of voters’ list, it will take three-four months before the polling schedule is declared, a senior officer with the election commission told TOI.
“The revision programme is the first step towards conducting elections,” he said. And the panel’s exhaustive exercise indicates the polling exercise cannot be conducted within deadline due to the ongoing pandemic.Booth level officers (BLOs) would execute door-to-door electoral roll verification, but voters can also apply online between October 1 and November 5. Online applications would be verified by the poll panel.
The commission said, given the Corona crisis, officials associated with the exercise must take preventive steps, including downloading of Aarogya Setu application, use of face masks during field duty, interaction with only one or two members of households and avoiding containment zones. The officials may visit hotspots only after the containment tag is removed by the district administration.
The commission would rope in around 1 lakh state government employees as BLOs for 2 lakh voting booths in 80,000 voting centres. The poll panel would also create a mobile application — eBLO — for booth level officers.