Elshinta.com – The Election Commission of India (ECI) has started preparing for the holding of the country’s next elections, which will take place in 2024.

“Next year, we will hold two types of elections, namely parliamentary elections and presidential elections,” ECI Chairman Rajiv Kumar said at a press conference in New Delhi on Monday ( 8/21).

India, which has a population of about 1.4 billion, will hold general elections in which some 945 million voters will participate. Of those 945 million voters, about 20.5 million people are aged 80 and over and about 322,000 are voters aged 100 and over, according to CIS data.

The ECI also said there were about 8.5 million voters aged 18 to 19 for the first time and that about 8.3 million voters were persons with disabilities. ECI Chairman Rajiv Kumar said India’s Election Commission wants to achieve several goals in next year’s elections. These objectives are that the elections be fair and transparent, that no voter is left behind, that they are inclusive, technology-based, easily accessible and with the full presence of political parties and the media.

“In terms of inclusiveness, we are very concerned about the participation of women, people with disabilities and young voters in next year’s elections,” he said.

Regarding the implementation of technology-based elections, according to the ECI Chairman, elections in India next year will also be conducted using electronic voting machines (electronic voting machine/EVM).

“Using this machine is an innovation that we are proud of,” Kumar said.

However, he also acknowledged that there would be a number of challenges when India’s elections are held next year, one of them being efforts to reach out to voters in remote areas. from the country.

Another challenge, according to Kumar, is anticipating the possibility of voter fraud. It is for this reason that he underlined the importance of the integrity of the organizers of the elections. Meanwhile, regarding the challenges of negative narratives, black campaigns, fake deep, fake news spread on social media, ECI said it will try to monitor and control stories on social media.

Among the measures that can be taken is the fight against fake news, without having to intervene in the campaign or in the efforts of activists and political parties. deep fakes is a video of a person whose face or body has been digitally altered to look like another person, usually used for malicious purposes or to spread false information.