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Mystery shrouds over why after two days of assembly polling on April 4, Chief Electoral Office in West Bengal revised the turnout to 84.22 per cent from 80.92 per cent. Is there any technical explanation for 3.3 percentage-point upward revision in turnout for the first polling day?
Bharat Berlia, Chief Information Officer of Indus Net Technologies, the poll-information system provider to the CEO, told Business Line that the system allowed an electoral supervisor or system administration to revise the polling turnout numbers in certain predetermined situations.
The company explained, in case, the supervisor finds any “mismatch” in updates by the polling officer, he had the authority to revise the number of a particular polling station. “The officer will have the authority to overwrite or update any of the previous messages from the booth”, the company official said.
This means the supervisors had authority to send any update on behalf of the booth “in case of any emergency”.
Further, the data of all the polling officers could be modified by the system administration at the CEO. “If required the admin could exercise the right to modify the same”, the company added. In that case, the inscription trail could also be obliterated from the system, Berlia added.
On two polling days so far in the State, the system handled mock polling reports, two-hourly polling updates from the booths from 9 am till 5 pm including number of voters in the queue at the end of polling hours as well as final turnout report. “The system is geared to actually record information from the time of polling officers reaching their booths till the election process was over”, Berlia said.
Poll booth officials could also notify CEO instantly about non-functioning electronic voting machines or law and order issues, Indus Net official said.
He said the system could also pick out polling officers, who fail to provide timely updates on the polling day.
He said the incoming messages were automatically processed within a central application server ensuring that all the records were updated.
The official explained that if the system did not receive an update within a specific interval, “an automated SMS alert was sent across to the supervisors.”
The system generates a list of such defaulters on a real-time basis to reduce chances of bogus voting or booth capturing.
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