The day elections are announced in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Mizoram voters in these states will get to use a mobile application to check poll code violations by political parties and candidates, Chief Election Commissioner O P Rawat has said.
The C-Vigil mobile application gives the common man the opportunity to click pictures and take videos of violations and send it to concerned election officers. Further the application can triangulate the exact location of the complaint using longitude and latitude information.
"Within 100 minutes, the complainant will be given feedback on the action taken," Rawat told PTI. As soon as the complaint lands in the inbox of the concerned returning officer and deputy election officer, it is verified within minutes and action including lodging of FIR is taken care of.
He said it is highly unlikely that the application will be misused. Rawat said as a pilot projet the application was used in Bangalore city during Karnataka assembly polls.
"Now, this is a bigger pilot ahead of Lok Sabha elections," he said.
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Though the application can be downloaded from Google Play Store and websites of EC and state chief electoral officers, it will be operational only in constituencies and states where there is an election.
Rawat said the application has an in-built option which will help the people tick a box to keep their name and cell phone number secret.
"The commission wants to empower the voter against any violation of the model code of conduct. If you are taking on a very powerful politician who can harass you the option to keep the identity a secret can be used," the CEC said.
Rawat reiterated that as soon as the picture or video is taken using the app, it should be sent immediately.
"No shoot and scoot is allowed. If the picture is uploaded from any other location, then the complaint will be discarded and the complainant will be informed accordingly," he said.
Rawat said often miscreants seek to violate the poll code by engineering complaints to mislead flying squads.
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