Need to ban opinion polls: chief election commissioner

Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi today favoured a ban on opinion polls before elections, saying they affected poll propects of political parties.
    
"Though exit polls had been banned, opinion polls are still allowed and political parties are hit by it," Quraishi said at a seminar on "Electoral and Political Reforms."   

Underlining the need to ban opinion polls conducted before elections, he said it was a major problem which could even lead to "paid opinion polls".
    
"In the circumstances, when news can be paid, even opinion polls can be paid," he said.
     
Speaking to reporters later, he said the Election Commission was yet to receive the report from its Technical Expert Committee on ways to improve the Electronic Voting Machines system and on provision of voter verifiable paper audit trail system in EVMs.
    
"The expert committee met in December and all the political parties were invited to take part in the day long conference. They (Political Parties) had given their
proposals.. 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.