Electoral Process and Integrity

Quraishi is a retired Indian civil servant who served as the 17th Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) of India. He has a Ph.D. in communications and social marketing. He has authored books that describe the enormity and complexity of Indian elections and on the heritage city of Delhi that talks about its social and cultural life. His latest book reveals how the right-wing spin to India’s population data has given rise to myths about the ‘Muslim rate of growth,’ that are often used to stoke majoritarian fears of a demographic skew––the book busts myths about Islam and family planning. He pursues academic interests by teaching and mentoring at the Cluster Innovation Centre, University of Delhi as an honorary professor. He is also a member of the International Elections Advisory Council.

Venkatesan Ramani is a retired IAS officer of the Maharashtra cadre. He has served in various capacities in the Governments of India and Maharashtra. He was associated with the conduct of elections to the Lok Sabha, state legislature and local bodies, in his capacity as District Election Officer and Returning officer, while serving in Maharashtra. He was also deputed by the Election Commission of India as Observer to oversee the preparation of electoral rolls and the conduct of elections in the states of Bihar, Assam and Madhya Pradesh. He has contributed opinion pieces in various print and online publications on different aspects of the electoral process.

Subhashis Banerjee is a Professor of Computer Science at Ashoka University on leave from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi. At IIT Delhi, he has held the Ministry of Urban Development, Microsoft and Naren Gupta chair professorships. He was head of the Department of Computer Science at IIT Delhi between 2004 and 2007 and head of the Computer Centre between 2009-2014. Banerjee is also associated with the School of Public Policy and the Centre for Transportation Research and Injury Prevention at IIT Delhi. His primary areas of research are computer vision and machine learning, with a special emphasis on geometric algorithms. He has been on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Computer Vision and Computers and Graphics. He has been published widely and has a keen interest in digitisation, including digital identities, electronic voting, data and privacy protection, and fairness and reliability of machine learning algorithms.

A former officer of the Indian Army and the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Devasahayam has considerable experience in conducting and supervising elections as a district election officer, a returning officer in an assembly constituency, an assistant returning officer, a returning officer and an Observer in various Parliamentary constituencies. He is closely associated with issues relating to strengthening of democracy in India. He is at present Coordinator, Citizens’ Commission on Elections; Convener, Forum for Electoral Integrity; Member, Constitutional Conduct Group and Chairman, People-First. He is a writer, columnist and author of several books, including India’s Second Freedom––An Untold Saga; JP in Jail––An Uncensored Account; JP Movement, Emergency and India’s Second Freedom and A Drop of Love––Memoir of Saint Teresa.