Days before polling for the Telangana State Assembly Elections, the election commission has logged 7,000 complaints on its cVIGIL app . Officials said the app was launched to have a faster information channel to transmit and track complaints on Model Code of Conduct (MCC) violations.
The Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Telangana, Vikas Raj revealed in a media briefing that 7,626 complaints were received till November 26. “As per the guidelines of Election Commission of India (ECI), immediate action has been taken within 100 minutes of the complaint. Apart from this, the 24x7 call centre, functioning with about 500 staffers, has received 44,282 calls from across the State,” he said.
Officials have also received about 6,300 complaints against MCC violations through National Grievance Services Portal (NGRS) and 784 through the toll free number - 1950. Officials have registered 1,020 FIRs related to MCC violations.
The cVIGIL mobile application gives a user a five-minute window to report an incident after having clicked a picture or a video. The app does not allow uploading of pre-recorded images/videos and also does not let the users save photos/videos clicked from the app into their phone’s gallery. To prevent misuse of the system and to avoid repetitive complaints from the same spot, the system forces a time delay of five minutes between successive complaints by the same person.
Officials from the State police said that the complaints from cVIGIL application are directed to the district election officials. “They then direct them to the District Election Officer (DEO), the Static Surveillance Teams and others to promptly follow up,” said the officials.
The designated District Controller has the power to drop a cVIGIL complaint without any further recourse in case a personal grievance is registered through the app or the digital attachment of a cVIGIL complaint is found to be unrelated to a MCC violation.
