New Delhi: The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday announced a fresh directive that counting of postal ballots must be completed before the penultimate round of Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) counting begins, adding yet another reform to what has become the most ambitious overhaul of the electoral process in recent memory.

With this decision and the recent introduction of an e-verification facility for the online submission of forms, including Form 7 for voter deletions, the poll body has now unveiled thirty-one distinct initiatives over the past six months.

Official sources told this newspaper that the latest move on postal ballots was designed to eliminate ambiguity in the sequencing of results, especially as the number of such ballots has risen sharply following the introd

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