Election officials in Kerala will be equipped with a specially designed mobile app to prevent impersonation and ‘double voting’ by voters on April 26, the Lok Sabha election day in the State.
The office of Chief Electoral Officer (Kerala) has developed the ‘ASD Monitor’ app with technical support of National Informatics Centre (NIC). ‘ASD’ refers to voters in the ‘Absentee, shifted and dead’ category.
The app will allow polling officials to keep tabs on whether multiple votes are being cast by an individual voter. Since polling officials will be monitoring the voters using the app, there is no space for concerns regarding problems such as duplication of names in the voters’ list, CEO (Kerala) Sanjay Kaul said.
The CEO’s office had decided to introduce the app for the Lok Sabha polls here encouraged by its success during the 2021 State Assembly elections. The list of ASD voters, prepared by booth-level officers (BLO), have been supplied to Presiding Officers and First Polling Officers in all the polling booths.
If a voter whose name is in the ASD list is allowed to cast his/her vote after verification, the relevant personal information and photograph will be recorded on the app. Once uploaded, the information cannot be edited.
The access to the app is restricted to the presiding officer and the first polling officer. They can download the app from Google PlayStore. The app will be operational during the duration of polling on April 26.
Mr. Kaul said the app will help to prevent ‘double voting’ and related disputes on polling day.
