Mobile app to monitor activities on polling day

Aakanksha N Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, April 18

Now, the poll staff will not have to stay on phone or send regular SMSs to give details about various activities on polling day to the CEO, Punjab. The Election Commission has developed a new mobile app — Poll Day Monitoring (PDM) — that will monitor the activities of the staff on the polling day and a day before.

On May 18 — the day before voting, the departure and arrival of polling parties will be monitored through the app.

On the day of polling, the information, which will be given by the presiding officers through the app, include the number of agents of polling parties, starting of the mock poll, polling started or delayed, halted and resumed, the number of votes polled after every two hours, the number of persons standing in a queue after 6 pm, departure and arrival of polling parties at the counting centers and depositing EVMs.

A senior official of the district administration said, “If the election process gets interrupted or halted, the reason will be given by the presiding officers. If there is any problem, the remarks will be added by the officer.”

“The CEO, Punjab, has roped in a private company to get the software developed,” the officer said, adding that it will help maintain the direct link between the officers at the district level and the CEO.

It is not available on play store as it is a closed app. Training in this regard will be given to the officers. The app will be installed in the mobile phones of the duty officers on the polling day.

GPS services will also be available in the app. The movement of the officers on the polling day will be tracked. The idea of the app is to make the proceeding easy.