Reporting during this election, the first in the age of COVID-19, presents a number of challenges for journalists covering the campaigns. Among the biggest is that while the Election Commission has presented a number of guidelines, election time is pretty much a festival on its own that brings with it many associated challenges. On Wednesday, October 21, for instance, the EC had to reiterate its guidelines for campaigning during the pandemic, noting that many parties and candidates in Bihar, which is going to the polls frmo October 28, had been lax in maintaining discipline in terms of crowd size. Shedding light on this and other aspects of covering this election is The Hindu’s Political Editor Nistula Hebbar, who has just returned from a reporting tour in Bihar, to tell us what she saw and experienced on the ground.

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