Karnataka State Election Commission (KSEC), in a bid to encourage more participation in the upcoming assembly election, has launched a smartphone app to help citizens find their voting booth and other details to cast their vote.
As per the official data, close to 4.9 crore people have registered voter ids and among them, more than 16 lakh are young (18 & 19 ages) voters, almost double compared to previous assembly election period. This number is expected to swell as the registration for the new voter ID closed on April 14.
Since there are a lot of first-time voters, election commission in collaboration with Karnataka State Remote Sensing Application Centre (KSRSAC) has developed an app dubbed as Chunavana to help them understand how the voting mechanism works and most importantly track the right voting booth.
Chunavana app is available on two major platforms— Google Play for Android mobiles and Apple App store for iPhones. In addition to locating voting booth, it will help you find the serial number and part number of your Electoral Photo ID Card (EPIC), which are important to narrow down your name in the electoral list in the voting booth. It also lists name and contact details of the election officers manning the booth, as well.
Furthermore, it also shows the real-time length of the queue in polling stations (56,696 across Karnataka). Last election, more than 17 percent citizens returned home without voting due to long queues. But, with this app, people can plan an appropriate time to head to the booth.
The Chunavana app also helps in booking wheelchair assistance for senior citizens and differently abled at the polling booths. It offers insights on previous elections results and voting patterns.
In a related development, KSEC is a collaboration with Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike(BBMP) has released another app— Model Code of Conduct (MCC)—so that citizens can a play active role in discouraging election candidates from doing malpractices such as distributing freebies to manipulate voters.
With the app, they can directly upload pictures, video, audio clip to the MCC server and it will compose email and forwarded to the local area election officials to take immediate action and if found any clinching evidence, they can remand the person into their custody for further investigation.
However, this app is restricted to Bengaluru region only, which has 28 out of 224 assembly seats in Karnataka.
