India’s experience of holding elections during the COVID-19 pandemic showed that other countries could go on with scheduled polls and not defer them, Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora said on Thursday.

Comment | Conducting elections during a pandemic

Citing the ongoing Bihar Assembly elections, of which the third and final phase of polling is on Saturday, Mr. Arora told members of the Association of World Election Bodies (A-WEB), at the inauguration of a virtual election visitors programme, that the Election Commission of India had prepared meticulously for the polls.

“There was no dearth of skeptics, cynics, extreme cynics, who were doing doomsday predictions for us,” he said.

“All EMBs [election management bodies] across democracies can be enthused enough from India’s foray into elections to pick up the gauntlet and organise elections as per original schedule and not defer,” he stated.