Gyanesh Kumar, Chief Election Commissioner of India.
Credit: ECI
New Delhi: From Bihar elections later this year, parties may not be able to attack the Election Commission (EC) accusing it of discrepancies in voter turnout data, as it is moving from manual process to a faster and technology-driven one.
Months after the Opposition raised questions on voter turnout data claiming discrepancies on its App, the Election Commission has reworked its process by making presiding officers in polling stations to directly enter data using technology instead of manually relaying it to the Returning Officers to significantly reduce time-gap in publicising it.
The new process, the EC said, would “significantly reduce the time lag associated with the earlier manual method”. The poll body is implementing the new changes on the process before the Bihar Assembly elections later this year.
The “huge” gap between voter turnout data on EC’s Voter Turn Out App between 5 PM and and the final count during Lok Sabha and subsequent Assembly elections, including in Maharashtra, had triggered questions from the Opposition but the EC had denied any wrongdoing. The Association for Democratic Reforms had approached the Supreme Court on the issue.
In Maharashtra polls last year, the Congress had claimed that there was an increase of 7 per cent points in voter turnout between 5 PM (58.22 per cent) and 11.30 PM (65.02 per cent) on November 20 when a provisional final count was given and argued that it meant 76 lakh votes were cast in one hour at the end of polling at 6 PM. It was further updated to 66.05 per cent hours prior to counting on November 23.
According to the EC, the Presiding Officers are required to furnish Form 17C, providing the account of votes recorded to polling agents at the close of poll. While it remains unchanged, the process of updating the Voter Turn Out App, a non-statutory mechanism aimed at keeping the public informed of the approximate turnout trends, is being “streamlined to ensure faster updation”.
Under the initiative, the Presiding Officer in each polling station will be directly entering turnout details on the new ECINET App every two hours on polling day. This will be automatically aggregated at constituency level.
“Notably, voter turnout data will now be entered into ECINET by PROs immediately after the close of poll, before they leave the polling station which will reduce the delays and ensure that the approximate percentage of votes polled would be available on the updated VTR App constituency-wise after the close of polls subject to network connectivity. Where mobile networks are unavailable, entries can be made offline and synced once connectivity is restored,” the EC said.
Previously, the voter turnout data was collected manually by Sector Officers and relayed to Returning Officers via phone calls, text messages, or messaging apps and this information was aggregated every two hours and uploaded to the App.
The polling percentage trends were often updated hours later, based on physical records arriving late in the night or even the next day, leading to delays of 4–5-hours or more leading to “misperceptions by some”