The Hindu Business Line : Tapping GIS to tackle poll opponents in AP

WHEN a party worker wanted to know where Mr K. Vijayarama Rao, the senior Telugu Desam leader seeking a re-election from Khairatabad constituency in the city, was campaigning at the moment, it was quite an easy job - calling up his campaign manager.

But it is not that easy for Mr Rao to know which booths were difficult for him and where his opponent, Mr P. Janardhan Reddy (Congress-I), was very strong at the last elections.

So, the former CBI Director asked a city-based company to give him a GIS (geographical information system) solution to help him in this.

The GIS solutions company came out with a dynamic solution that can provide a wide variety of information at the click of the button.

``You can use different permutations and combinations to get information on various counts. You can ask queries,'' a company executive told Business Line.

Mr Rao polled 1,59,018 votes, defeating the Congress (I) candidates with a majority of 10,377 votes, in the largest constituency of the State in the last election. The margin was just 3.26 per cent.

Keeping in view the thin margin and low percentage of polling (only 50 per cent of the 5,93,194 electorate cast their votes), Mr Vijayarama Rao decided to bank on the GIS solution to understand things better.

"The decision-support systems based on GIS are in vogue in the US and the UK in the time of elections," the executive says.

``We have fed booth-wise poll results into the solution. The dynamic solution can filter figures basing on the queries made,'' he points out.

One can use options like `greater than', `and', `less than', `or', and, `within' to get desired results. ``This is logical and scientific,'' he says.

Using some or all of these options, one can identify areas where one is weak or strong vis-à-vis one's opponent.

The solution gives you the statistical position on different parameters, leaving the decision-making part to the candidate.

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