Election Commission of India (ECI) has amended the implementation of ‘cVIGIL’ and it would be made effective from the date of notification of polls, said Chhattisgarh Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Subrat Sahoo.
Officials said that ‘cVIGIL’ is a user-friendly and easy to operate Android application, for citizens to report any violation of model code of conduct (MCC) during election.
ECI is introducing the application for general use by all, with announcement of election schedule in States of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Rajasthan and Telangana. It is a pilot initiative taken by ECI before it is
put to extensive use during the Lok Sabha Elections 2019, officials said.
Earlier, due to lack of any documented evidence in form of pictures or videos was a hurdle in verifying a complaint, leading to the violators escaping detection from the action squads. The Election Commission of India hopes that the new App will fill all gaps of accurately identifying the scene of occurrence of violations, verification of location (GPS) and also create a fast-track complaint reception and redressal system, officials pointed out.
Officials said that the App developed by ECI requires an Android smartphone equipped with a camera, good internet connection and GPS access. Any citizen, political parties, party workers do not have to rush to the office of Returning Officer or Chief Electoral Officer to lodge a complaint.
The officials said that the alert citizen needs to click a picture or record a video of up to two minutes during of the scene of violations of the model code of conduct. The photograph or video is to be uploaded on the application. On successful submission through the App, the citizen gets a unique ID to track and will receive the follow up updates on his or her mobile phone. Any citizen can report as many incidents following the steps and will get unique ID for each report for follow up updates. The identity of the complainant will be kept confidential.
After the Control Room based at District and State level receives it, the flying squads, Static Surveillance Teams and others will directly reach the location through navigation technology and take action. The team will dispatch the ‘action taken report via the ‘cVIGIL Dispatcher’ to the returning officer concerned for his decision and disposal. If incident reported is found to be correct, then it is sent to National Grievance Portal of Election Commission of India for further action. The vigilant citizen is informed about the action taken within a hundred minutes.