Web-casting at 247 vulnerable polling booths in Dakshina Kannada

Following the partial success of the first ever web-casting of the assembly elections in 272 polling booths in Dakshina Kannada last May, the district administration has once again geared up to adopt the method in the forthcoming parliament election.

The interested students from engineering colleges will get an opportunity to operate webcam enabled laptops in selected polling booths and capture live polling video which will be uploaded in the district administration’s official website. The officials at the district control room will monitor the polling process directly in the district control rooms. 

A meeting to discuss the role of BSNL officials and engineering colleges of the district in the process of election web-casting was convened at the deputy commissioner’s office on Thursday. Principals / representatives of 15 engineering institutes including NITK participated in the meeting and extended their co-operation to the initiative.  

Addressing the meeting, Deputy Commissioner A B Ibrahim said that the district administration has planned to put web-casting system in place in the selected 247 vulnerable (sensitive and hyper sensitive) polling booths across the district.

It includes 30 booths in Belthangady assembly segment, 27 in Moodbidri, 25 in Mangalore North, 53 in Mangalore South, 27 each in Mangalore and Bantwal, 23 in Puttur and 25 in Sullia. Of this, 220 schools have BSNL landline connectivity, hence providing broadband will not be a problem, he said. 

He assured the BSNL officials of providing them with the list of polling booths selected for web-casting within three days, so as to find out the availability of BSNL network in those areas. The students will be trained well-in advance to avoid any last minute glitches.

The basic idea behind webacasting is to promote free and fair election. The system could be improved this time by making it live for general public, to motivate them to exercise franchise.

Benefit to students

The students who will be directly involved in the election duty, will be given the Election Duty Certificate which will help them cast vote in the polling booth they have been assigned to web-cast.

“It will be a unique experience for students to perform election duty. They will be provided with necessary facilities, except the laptop and webcam, which they will have to bring on their own. They will also be given honourarium for their service,” the Deputy Commissioner said.

The Deputy Commissioneralso assured of taking measures to avoid loopholes like power fluctuations and weak broadband signal that had affected the web-casting in the previous election.