The Election Commission postponed two Electoral Literacy Club conferences in Uttar Pradesh featuring CEC Gyanesh Kumar.
The ECI said the decision was unrelated to the ongoing controversy over reported objections by two commissioners.
The comes after the reported objections by Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi on SIR-related decisions.
EC Postpones Gyanesh Kumar's Youth Outreach Events, Official Says 'No Link To Controversy'
The Electoral Literacy Club (ELC) regional conferences were planned in Meerut and Varanasi as part of the ECI’s voter awareness programme
Summary
The Election Commission of India (ECI) has postponed Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kaumar's two youth-focused voter awareness programmes in Uttar Pradesh, Hindustan Times reported quoting officials on Friday.
The Electoral Literacy Club (ELC) regional conferences were planned in Meerut and Varanasi as part of the ECI’s voter awareness programme. The Meerut conference, scheduled for Friday, included an interaction with young voters, while a similar Gen-Z engagement event was planned in Varanasi on September 28.
An ECI official said the postponement was not connected to the ongoing controversy involving the poll panel. The decision was taken on September 21 and communicated to officials the same day, the official said as reported by Hindustan Times.
“Adjustments in dates of events is an ongoing process which is necessitated by various factors such as availability of venues, schedules of higher authorities, natural factors,” the ECI official said.
The postponement comes amid questions raised over the functioning of the Election Commission following a report by The Indian Express that claimed Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had recorded objections at least 14 times over 10 months on decisions related to electoral roll revisions.
The reported objections included matters concerning voter additions, deletions, restoration of names and changes to the registration process. The Election Commission has rejected suggestions of internal disagreement affecting its functioning and maintained that decisions of the full commission, including those related to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, were taken unanimously.
Officials said similar ELC conferences have been postponed or rescheduled in the past, including in Himachal Pradesh, Ladakh and Uttarakhand.
Electoral Literacy Clubs are an ECI initiative aimed at educating students and first-time voters about electoral processes, including registration, voting, counting and the constitutional role of the Commission.
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The current phase, ELC 2.0, is being rolled out through state-level regional conferences and is part of the ECI’s voter awareness programme ahead of the 2027 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.
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