The State election authority, Chief Electoral Officer’s office, has deployed series of technology tools to check the scope for flow of cash, liquor and other freebies in the forthcoming elections to the Legislative Assembly.
Prime among the tools is the Election Seizure Management System (ESMS) being used by the election authority for the first time to ensure seamless coordination and intelligence sharing among enforcement agencies. ESMS, conceived as a platform for on-boarding all the Central and State enforcement agencies, will also monitor the action taken by the enforcement agencies against such offences.
The Election Commission of India has introduced the technology to monitor use of money power and poll inducements to influence voters, a factor that disturbs level playing field in the elections. The agencies which are logged on to the ESMS, are required to upload details of every recorded movement and seizure of illicit cash, liquor and other freebies. The new technology is aimed at enabling real time updates from the ground-level as well as ensure effective coordination and intelligence sharing between the enforcement agencies.
ESMS has been introduced to ensure that various agencies worked in close coordination, not in silos, according to officials. The election authority had deployed several other Apps like Encore, for processing various types of permissions sought by candidates/political parties, entry of candidate details, affidavits to be filed by the candidates, entry of two-hourly poll percentage and others. While the election authority is utilising several technology tools, the Income Tax department on its part is using big data analytics for analysing the data of financial transactions through digital intelligence solutions to keep an eye on the movement of high value transactions.
“The ESMS App is meant to intimate the department about the suspicious movement of cash, bullion and other freebies. The response time from the departments in case of complaints is less than 30 minutes after receipt of such information,” Income Tax Director General (Investigations) Sanjay Bahadur said at a recent press conference.
