Dear Friends,

The National Conference of Electoral Reforms will be held on June 26, 27.  It is being jointly organised by the Centre for Public Policy, IIM Bangalore and the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR). 

Chief Election Commissioner Mr.T.S.Krishnamurthy has agreed to attend this Conference.   Mr.Krishnamurthy said that he would like to listen to the suggestions and   recommendations of all of you. Hence, instead of inaugurating and leaving,  he will  attend on the second day, and perhaps even respond to some of your suggestions. In any case, the EC will seriously consider your recommendations later.

A preliminary agenda is given below. We plan to invite the following groups of people/organizations:

(i) All Election Watch groups, NGOs and organizations in the country that are non-partisan
(ii) All senior officials of the Election Commission.
(iii) Senior people from the media.
(iv) Representatives of Political parties
(v) Funding agencies.
(vi) Other eminent citizens, non-political leaders, and thinkers
Any thoughts on the invitees are welcome.

A preliminary agenda is as follows:
(i) Sharing of experiences of all of you on Election Watch and related activities.
(ii) Session on voter rolls and suggestions on cleaning this up
(iii) Session on affidavits - their formats and design
(iv) Session on affiavits - action plan for incomplete and false affidavits
(v) Session on Electoral expenses and how to get greater transparency in this
(vi) Political party reform - this is a very broad theme and the purpose is to continue the discussion on this so that eventually we are able to bring about some changes
(vii) Recommendations to the Election Commission
(viii) Action plans for the future.

In addition, there is likely to be a off-line technical session on managing the country wide information in the future - the software to be used, the data entry formats, and so on. People who are IT experts will participate in this with a few others who want to give some inputs.

We also plan to release two reports: one is for all the candidates who won the Lok Sabha elections. the second is a compendium of all candidates who contested.

The Conference will also provide an opportunity to all of us to exhibit our work - reports, posters, short films, brochures and so on that many of you have.

We look forward to your participation and responses to the issues raised above.

Please circulate this to your friends who are interested in this issue and who might want to participate in this conference.

Local accommodation and meals have been arranged. Please let us know whether you need the accommodation.

Thank you.

Trilochan Sastry O: 91-80-2699-3285
Professor R: 91-80-2699-3225
Indian Institute of Management Fax: 91-80-2658-4050
Bannerghatta Road
Bangalore 560076