Chief Electoral Officer (Kerala) Rathan U. Kelkar:

Kerala, which will face the State Assembly elections in 2026, may need approximately 6,500 more polling stations with the Election Commission of India (ECI) setting a limit of 1,200 voters per polling station, a preliminary assessment has revealed.

All new polling stations will be permanent ones as the concept of ‘auxiliary polling stations/booths’ has been done away with, Rathan U. Kelkar, Chief Electoral Officer (Kerala), told The Hindu on Wednesday.

“The number of polling stations will increase. We have started off the process. We feel that we may need an additional 6,500 polling stations across the State. That’s an estimate based on the data that we have,” Mr. Kelkar said.

Assessments are on at the district-level to identify new spaces for implementing the ECI directive on the voter-polling station ratio. New polling stations are opened in consultation with political parties, which is a mandatory requirement. At present, Kerala has 25,494 polling stations, Mr. Kelkar said.

As per the ECI definition, a polling station is “the room/hall fixed for holding poll where the electors of the polling area concerned cast their votes on the day of poll. It is also referred to as polling booth.” Under the earlier arrangement, the ECI used to open auxiliary stations when the number of electors in a polling area exceeded the prescribed limit.

Mr. Kelkar’s office had already implemented the new arrangement in the Nilambur Assembly constituency where 59 permanent booths have been added for the June 19 byelection necessitated by the resignation of Independent MLA P.V. Anvar. The Nilambur constituency now has 263 polling stations.

Finding space for new polling stations in Kerala may not prove that difficult as most polling stations are housed in schools and colleges, Mr. Kelkar said. In most cases, new stations can be accommodated by securing more classrooms.