Tracey's first vocational day - State Electoral Commission

No photos available for today - the three members of staff I visited requested their images not to be published. Time was made available to me and my host for the day, Mr R Bhaskaran, to talk through the elections system in Bangalore and across the whole of India. They were kind enough to give me a presentation on how each level worked, how voting was conducted and how people could be nominated. I asked lots of questions about equalities issues - representation of women and disabled people amongst the candidates and the system allows anyone to stand, from all classes and abilities either as a member of a recognised party or as an independent. Sometimes upto 30 candidates can stand for a seat and on average, upto 1200 people visit each polling station during its 8 hour opening time - there are queues!! Bearing in mind that just in the Karnataka area there are 60 million people the scale of the operation even for local elections is staggering. Thank you to the Elections staff for their time (and lots of websites to look up in England!), to Mr Bhaskaran for his hospitality and the opportunity to meet his family after the meeting.