HYDERABAD: A delegation from Telangana, led by State Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) C Sudharshan Reddy, met Annabelle Hageman, director-general of FPS Interior, and senior European Parliament officials in Brussels on Tuesday, during which India’s election management system was presented as a global benchmark in transparency and legal robustness.
Addressing the high-level interaction, the CEO said that India has built the world’s most transparent and legally robust election management system, capable of handling nearly a billion voters across some of the most complex terrains on earth.
Sudharshan said the ECI conducted the 2024-25 elections for about 979 million electors, deploying more than 20 million personnel, making it the largest election operation ever mounted globally. India’s democracy functions across 23 languages, multiple religions and extreme geographies ranging from Himalayan hamlets to island villages, with polling booths serving anywhere between one and 1,500 voters, he said.
At the heart of the system is the world’s largest electoral roll, maintained through year-round registration and four qualifying dates annually. Of nearly one billion names published in January 2025, authorities resolved around 20 million claims and objections, while only 89 appeals were eventually filed. Political parties and booth-level agents, he noted, act as “concurrent auditors” throughout the process.
The CEO highlighted the security architecture of India’s Electronic Voting Machines with VVPATs, calling them standalone, non-networked and tamper-proof. During the 2024 elections, India counted 705 million votes in a single day using 6.2 million EVM units.
Over 817 million VVPAT slips were viewed by voters, and physical verification of 16 million slips during counting found no mismatches. All 41 legal challenges to EVMs over 35 years have been dismissed by the Supreme Court.
He said elections are conducted strictly under constitutional and statutory frameworks, supported by thousands of general, police and expenditure observers and a growing digital ecosystem of voter and candidate apps.
“India has earned public trust through hard work and absolute transparency. The ECI today sets the global gold standard for elections held as per law,” he added.
