Election Commission is going the smart way. The Commission is using the cyber space to bring complete information on the polling booths and their exact location on your cell phones, and the desktops.
launched with the sole aim to facilitate the voters saving them from undue harassment to know their polling stations, the Commission has come out with a ‘Electoral Roll Search Facility’ in as many as 16 States, including Punjab.
The same facility can also be downloaded as an ‘app’ on your smart phones. This is not all! The commission has also made the facility available via SMS. What is more, Bathinda District Election Officer (DEO), going a step ahead, has also developed an Android-based application “i-vote” which would lead you to your polling booth. Already, the SMS facility giving details of the queues, and the polling station was introduced by the Commission.
“Election Commission of India (ECI) has launched this unique initiative to enable the voters to search their names and polling stations in the nationwide electoral rolls. This service could be availed through internet on mobiles, tablets or computers, and SMS through mobiles,” informed Punjab Additional Chief Electoral Officer Supreet Singh Gulati.
Giving details, he said that ECI’s facility can enable the voters, who have lost their voter identity cards (I-cards), to search their polling booth with just their name, father’s or husband’s name or the State. “It come out with all the names…and search would be more refined in case you know your Assembly segment, and other information it would ask for like age or date of birth,” he added.
To avail the facility, all that voters have to do is log in to ECI’s website — eci.nic.in. “On the main page, there is a link on the top right ‘voter search’. For mobile internet users, a specially designed website — www.electoralsearch.in — has been formed, while for android phone users, service could be availed by installing an application from Mobile Seva Appstore of the government — that is apps.mgov.gov.in — under electoral category.
“SMS users could access information by sending preformatted SMS to predefined numbers. Services are available on a special three digit code 166 provided for BSNl, Idea, MTNl, Tata Docomo, Tata Indicom and Vodafone users. Special five-digit code — 51969 — has been provided by operators such as Aircel, Airtel, BSNl, Idea, MTS, Reliance, Tata Docomo, Tata Indicom, Uninor, Videocon and Vodafone for the same service,” he added.
Besides, any user could access service by sending SMS to a ten-digit number — 09223166166 typing ECI followed by details such as name, name of father/husband, locality, age or date of birth and gender separated by commas.
RANDOMISATION OF POllING STAFF COMPlETED
All the DEOs have completed randomiSation of polling staff thereby informing them about the Assembly constituency where they would be put in for election duty. He clarified that the polling staff would be told about the polling station for their duty just before one day i.e. April 29 from the date of polling.