Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar has postponed his scheduled visits to Uttar Pradesh to attend electoral literacy club conferences, with officials describing the rescheduling as a routine exercise.
The officials noted that similar conferences in Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand were also postponed in the recent past.
Kumar was to attend regional conferences of electoral literacy clubs in Meerut and Varanasi.
The communication regarding the postponements was sent on September 21.
The postponement comes amid a controversy over differences within the poll panel, following reports that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had raised objections to several decisions of the Commission. The ECI has maintained that its decisions were taken unanimously.
Officials said the postponement was not linked to the controversy and that the decision was taken on September 21. While the controversy erupted on September 23, the UP visits were postponed on September 21, they underlined.
Similarly, visits to Ladakh, Himachal and Uttarakhand were deferred much earlier, they said.
"Adjustments in dates of events is an ongoing process which is necessitated by various factors such as availability of venues, schedules of higher authorities, natural factors," an official said.
Sources said the two Uttar Pradesh programmes had been postponed indefinitely.
The Election Commission has initiated renewed efforts to reach out to Gen Alpha and Z ahead of the 2029 Lok Sabha polls to make them well-versed with the electoral process.
As part of its revamped campaign, the poll authority will target school students of Classes 9 to 12, colleges and universities across the 4,123 assembly constituencies of India.
The ELCs are an ECI initiative aimed at familiarising school and college students, particularly first-time voters, with the electoral process. The Commission has been holding regional conferences under its revamped ELC 2.0 programme along with outreach on ECINET, its voter services platform.
On Thursday, Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi called for CEC Kumar to resign. Cockroach Janta Party also called for his resignation, saying they would launch a protest if he did not do so within 48 hours.
(With inputs from PTI)
