New Delhi: The Election Commission of India today released five International Training Modules on Planning for Elections, Political Finance, Voter Registration, Election Technology, and Political Parties and EMBs. This is part of a total of ten modules under preparation by the India International Institute of Democracy and Election Management (IIIDEM) in collaboration with the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES). The Modules were virtually launched by Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra along with Election Commissioners Rajiv Kumar and Anup Chandra Pandey, along with the President, IFES, Anthony Banbury, and his team joining from Washington, through a video conference.
CEC Sushil Chandra in his address emphasized that the Election Commission of India places high value on innovation and technological up-gradation to ensure meticulous, accurate, voter-friendly implementation of election processes by committed, competent, credible, and skilled managers. Sushil Chandra welcomed the development of these well-informed updated subject specialized modules for international trainees who will be trained at IIIDEM. He appreciated the wide range of topics being covered to address the key dimensions in any election management process.
Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar in his message spoke about the importance of these module designs, considering the ever-increasing challenges in various aspects of election administration as seen internationally and faced by the Election Management Bodies worldwide. He noted that the modules are designed in a versatile pattern, so as to render them compatible with face-to-face, online, and e-Learning training hybrid modes.
Election Commissioner Anup Chandra Pandey highlighted that the Modules can serve as informative material for understanding the process of election management on a wide range of topics of significant importance towards training and capacity development in preparation of election management plans, observation procedures, electoral technology, electoral systems, legal framework.
The President of IFES, Anthony Banbury gave a brief overview of the IFES-ECI partnership and the modules. He assured ECI of IFES-IIIDEM’s continuing partnership in knowledge sharing.
The International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) is a Washington DC-based non-governmental organization that supports citizens’ right to participate in free and fair elections. ECI had initially signed an MoU in May 2012 with IFES for developing training modules and capacity building.
Recently in 2019, after the visit of the then CEC to Washington, IFES agreed to update the eight existing International Training modules and create two new modules namely Political Parties and EMBs and Social Media and Elections. The contract for this was signed on August 5, 2020.
DG IIIDEM and Senior DEC Dharmendra Sharma also informed that the Commission has approved the translations of portions of these modules into Spanish, French and Portuguese as part of the commitment made by the then CEC of India in September 2019 as chair of A-Web, in response to a request of several Least Developed Countries for IIIDEM to embark upon “foreign language assisted modules”.
