Need to ban opinion polls: CEC

Chennai, Feb 12 (PTI) Chief Election Commissioner S YQuraishi today favoured a ban on opinion polls beforeelections, saying they affected poll propects of politicalparties.

"Though exit polls had been banned, opinion polls arestill allowed and political parties are hit by it," Quraishisaid at a seminar on "Electoral and Political Reforms" here.

Underlining the need to ban opinion polls conductedbefore elections, he said it was a major problem which couldeven lead to "paid opinion polls".

"In the circumstances, when news can be paid, evenopinion polls can be paid," he said.

Speaking to reporters later, he said the ElectionCommission was yet to receive the report from its TechnicalExpert Committee on ways to improve the Electronic VotingMachines system and on provision of voter verifiable paperaudit trail system in EVMs.

"The Expert committee met in December and all thepolitical parties were invited to take part in the day longconference. They (Political Parties) had given theirproposals.. the committee is examining them..", he said.

"Several proposals were received during the conference --there are technical proposals and administrative proposals.

After examining all those details, we (Election Commission)will take a view on it..", he said.