Chief Election Commissioner of India visits Egypt

Cairo, April 20: Chief Election Commissioner S Y Quraishi, is visiting Egypt to apprise the top officials in the country about the electoral system in India and the usage of EVMs, as it prepares itself for democratic process after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak regime.

Quraishi is accompanied by a 5-member team from the Election Commission of India which is on a five day visit to Egypt from on Tuesday. The visit ends on April 23.

Egypt''s military rulers had last month announced an interim constitution and said presidential elections would be held by November after Mubarak was ousted in a popular revolution.

During the visit, the Chief Election Commissioner of India is scheduled to have meetings with Yehiah Al Aziz El Gamal, Deputy Prime Minister, Mohamed Abdelaziz El Gendy, Minister of Justice, Nabil El Araby, Foreign Minister, Magued Osman, Minister of Communications and Information Technology.

He will also interact with the Egyptian Supreme Committee for Presidential Elections and Egyptian High Election Committee for Parliamentary Elections.

During his stay in Egypt, Quraishi is also scheduled to have a meeting with the members of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs.

The Indian delegation will brief the Egyptian dignitaries about the system followed in India for conducting different elections and also make a presentation on the use of Electronic Voting Machines that have been in use in India for some years.

The polls may be held in November. It will be the second presidential election in Egypt''s history, following the 2005 election and presidential confirmation referendum in 1999, 1993, and earlier.

Mubarak had been President from 1981, following the assassination of Anwar Sadat, until his resignation in February 2011.

Potential candidates include Mohamed ElBaradei (the ex-Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and joint recipient, with the Agency, of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize), Amr Moussa (the current Secretary-General of the Arab League, and former Egyptian Foreign Minister) and Ahmed Zewail (Egyptian-American scientist, and the winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry), among others.

PTI