Election Commission officials to visit five states to review assembly poll preparations

Senior officials from the Election Commission of India will begin visiting five poll-bound states this week to assess ground-level preparations and oversee early electoral arrangements.

Teams of officials led by Deputy Election Commissioners are scheduled to visit Goa first, with a visit to Uttarakhand planned for next week. In the following weeks, the teams will travel to Punjab and then Manipur to inspect preparations. The commission has not yet set a date for its officials to visit Uttar Pradesh, which is by far the largest of the five states preparing for polls.

These regional tours by Deputy Election Commissioners are a standard prelude to the formal election cycle. Typically, the "full Commission"—which includes the Chief Election Commissioner and the other Election Commissioners—makes its own visits to poll-bound states shortly before the official voting dates are announced. Under the provisions of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, the Election Commission has the authority to conduct assembly elections up to six months before the current term of a state legislature expires.

State terms and assembly sizes

The upcoming elections will decide the next governments for five states whose assembly terms end in the first half of 2027.

• Uttar Pradesh: The term of the 403-member assembly is set to expire on 22 May 2027.
• Manipur: The term of the 60-member assembly ends in March 2027.
• Goa: The term of the 40-member assembly ends in March 2027.
• Punjab: The term of the 117-member assembly ends in March 2027.
• Uttarakhand: The term of the 70-member assembly ends in March 2027.

Voting machine diagnostics begin

Preparations are already underway in Uttar Pradesh and Goa, where election officials have started the first-level checks on the electronic voting machines and paper trail units that will be used by voters. These checks follow a strict timeline set by the Election Commission.

During this preliminary phase, engineers from Bharat Electronics Limited and Electronics Corporation of India Limited—the two public sector undertakings that manufacture India's voting equipment—examine the machines for mechanical or electronic defects. Any machinery found to be faulty is returned directly to the manufacturers for repair or replacement.

As part of the checks, engineers completely erase any data remaining on the control and ballot units from previous elections. Once a set of machines passes all diagnostics, it is marked "FLC OK" and secured with a specialised pink paper seal to prevent unauthorised access before polling day. Representatives of political parties are also invited to witness mock polls to ensure the equipment functions transparently. A complete electronic voting machine setup consists of at least one ballot unit, one control unit, and one voter-verifiable paper trail printer.