Sikkim to conduct eco-friendly and digitized general panchayat elections on November 10

Sikkim State Election Commission (SSEC) will conduct eco-friendly and digitized general panchayat elections which are scheduled to be held on 10 November. 

This time, the Commission would encourage all concerned to make the entire election process eco-friendly and will discourage the use of single-use plastic during meetings and use only eco-friendly banners and posters during campaigning. 

Further, the commission is also trying to conduct the election in a digitized manner and there will be a QR code in a ballot with a surveillance system for polling agents and real-time tracking. 

The Panchayat Election shall be conducted in a party-less manner and not based on political party symbols. This change has been brought about by the Sikkim Panchayat (Amendment) Act, 2020. 

The reservation patterns will be 40 per cent for ST, ST (BL) each. For Scheduled Caste (SC) there is 6 per cent, OBC CL  26 per cent, OBC State 25 per cent, Unreserved  3 per cent, and as usual 50 per cent reservation of seats for women will be maintained both in Zilla Panchayat and Gram Panchayat. 

The election will be held in 122 Territorial Constituency ( Zilla Panchayat), 191 Gram Panchayat Unit, 1147 wards with 207708 male and 202243 female votes. Altogether there are 42, 9951 voters. 

Moreover, special attention has been given to the newly created districts of Soreng and Pakyong due to logistical reasons and certain parameters, notwithstanding the limitations.

As per the KC Lepcha, State Election Commissioner, strong rooms have been created in these districts for the conduct of the election process.