Voting to be webcast
By Kerala IT News

The Election Commission has decided to webcast the voting for the Kerala Legislative Assembly to be held on April 13, 2011. The live streaming from the sensitive polling stations across Kerala would help in the online and remote monitoring of voting. This was announced by the Chief Election Commissioner of India, Dr. S Y Quraishi, on March 18, 2011 while briefing the media in Thiruvananthapuram.

Dr. S Y Quraishi said, “This idea was first implemented by a young IAS Officer in a remote polling station in Manipur during the last elections and it was found to be very effective. Since the webcast is available on the Internet, anyone can view the polling process. This is yet another initiative of the Election Commission to improve the transparency in the electoral process and also to provide a level playing field for free and fair elections”. The poll monitoring will be done at the District, State and National levels.

Such large scale webcasting is being introduced for first time in this election to be held in five states. In Kerala, State owned Enterprise, Keltron has been assigned the task of webcasting from the polling stations. There are 20,758 polling stations in Kerala. There are 2,29,47,469 crore voters in Kerala with women outnumbering the men by about 10 lakhs.

The Election Commission has also launched an integrated call centre with nationwide toll free number 1965 to address poll related issues.

(In Techgoss syndication arrangement with Keralaitnews.com )