Pilot exercise successful in Meghalaya
SHILLONG: The Election Commission of India (ECI) will now use mobile phones to track the EVMs.
Meghalaya Chief Electoral Officer F.R. Kharkongor on Friday informed that a pilot exercise was successfully initiated for 330 numbers of Balloting Unit (BU) and for 288 numbers of Control Unit (CU), each in West Jaintia Hills district wherein each of these machines were tagged with bar codes, and subsequently mobile phones were used to upload information and unique ID of each and every EVM.
Thereafter, the same was uploaded to a mobile application linked to a server located at the Election Commission. Further, images of each EVM were captured and uploaded for transmission to the central server for effecting stock taking and tracking of EVMs.
The Joint Secretary, Election department and Joint Chief Electoral Officer, also said as per instructions of Election Commission of India, all the EVMs in the State are to immediately initiate stock taking using mobile technology.
In this regard, a State-level training was held on Friday for Election officials of all the districts along with technical personnel at the office of the Deputy Commissioner, East Khasi Hills in the presence of the Chief Electoral Officer, Additional CEO W. Khyllep, Joint CEO T. Lyngwa and Deputy Commissioner P.S. Dkhar. The CEO briefed the participating officials on the importance of the exercise as a means and a measure to further strengthen EVM tracking and stock taking by applying appropriate technology with a view to better election management.
He also informed that all districts are to ensure that the entire exercise should be completed within July 16 this year as per ECI instructions.
On the occasion, a special information booklet was released containing FAQs on National Electoral Roll Purification (NERP) and prepared for wide dissemination and circulation among Booth Level Officials (BLOs) and other stakeholders.
This is part of the intensive NERP programme which has been launched in the State, to rectify inaccuracies and errors in the electoral roll, with the overall objective of paving the way for healthy electoral rolls which is a prerequisite for free and fair elections.