Governor MOH Farook and chief electoral officer Debashish Gupta at the exhibition in Ranchi on Monday. (Prashant Mitra)

Ranchi, Nov. 15: The Constitution of the Election Commission of India (ECI) completed its 60th year on the occasion of which a photo exhibition was hosted which served the palate of the historical moments captured during the general elections. Governor M.O.H. Farook inaugurated the show at the Town Hall here today.

The three-day photo exhibition, which provided glimpses of the country’s electoral process, has been jointly organised by ECI, Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP) and chief electoral officers of states and union territories.

The exhibition offers a mosaic of pictures like Himachal’s post-election process, the highest altitude polling station of Hikkam (15000 ft from the mean sea level) in Lahaul and Spiti (two remote Himalayan valleys of Himachal Pradesh lying on the Indo-Tibet border), and of aged voters. Pictures focussing on themes like ‘my vote my right’, youth power and women’s participation are also on display. Besides Prime Minister Indira Gandhi watching the demonstration of EVM design in New Delhi in 1980 can be seen.

Other pictures which attract people are the rare photographs of different ballot boxes used in first general election (1951-52), polling materials being carried with the help of ropeway across river Spiti, Himachal Pradesh, electronic voting machine being carried on elephant in Assam.

“It has the rarest photographs of the leaders like G.B. Pant, Vijay Lakshmi Pandit and Lal Bahadur Shashtri during the election campaign in Delhi, 1950. This photo exhibition provides an insight of the country’s electoral process,” said visitor Mani Sinha, a government employee.

However, the visitors were delighted to see a picture portraying ‘power to people against all odds’. This picture was based on the 5th phase of parliamentary election in the Ladakh parliamentary constituency, the polling of which was scheduled on May 13, 2009 but due to snowfall roads leading to Padam got blocked.

“It is quite astonishing to see that the polling parties had to cross such a high altitude pass, Ralakung, at a height of 16, 500 feet. It almost took 48 hours to reach the polling station,” said visitor Ronit Kumar, a student of Ranchi College.

Besides, the exhibition has glimpses of Jawaharlal Nehru while casting his vote in 1962 and Babu Jagjivan Ram casting his vote in the vice-president election in 1984.

This three-day exhibition also offers electoral map of Jharkhand, mainly Jharkhand Assembly General election 2009, assembly constituencies of Jharkhand, among other things.