Bengaluru: As the Election Commission of India announced the election dates for Bihar polls to be held in 3 phases in 2 months, let’s look at how it has taken the pains to organise it. 

Here are the salient features: 

1.    The voting timing has been increased by one hour. Now, the voting will take place from 7am to 6pm. Earlier, it used to take place between 7am to 5pm. However, this will be not be applicable in Maoist-hit areas.
2. District election officers will identify grounds for physical campaigning and also ensure circles are marked on the ground to ensure social distancing.

3. Number of voters per polling station has been cut to 1,000 to facilitate social distancing. This will raise the number of polling stations to over 1 lakh in 2020 from 65,337 in the 2015 elections.

4. Covid-19 patients who're quarantined will be able to cast their vote on the last day of poll, at their respective polling stations, under the supervision of health authorities. This is besides the option of postal facility already extended to them.

5. Over 7 lakh hand sanitiser units, nearly 46 lakh masks, 6 lakh PPE kits, 6.7 lakh units of faces-shields, 23 lakh (pairs of) hand gloves have been arranged for the polls. 7.2 crore single-use hand gloves have also been arranged for the voters.

All these points were as published in Times of India.