'Under New System, Presiding Officers to Enter Voter Turnout Data Every Two Hours on Polling Day': ECI
New Delhi: A streamlined, technology-driven system to provide timely updates on the approximate voter turnout percentage trends, is being introduced by the Election Commission of India (ECI).
The new process will significantly reduce the time lag associated with the earlier manual reporting methods, said a press information bureau (PIB) release on Tuesday (June 3).
It added that the initiative aligns with the ECI’s commitment to ensure timely public communication, which has often been underlined by chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on various occasions.
The new initiative comes after in recent years, questions have been raised on the conduct of the ECI after in some instances, differences have been noticed between votes polled and the voter turnout.
A month after the results of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Vote For Democracy (VFD), a Maharashtra-based citizens’ platform, had claimed that the difference between approximate votes polled shared by the ECI on polling days at around 8 pm and the final voter turnout is nearly 5 crores.
Under the new initiative, the presiding officer (PRO) of each polling station, will now be directly entering voter turnout on the new ECINET App every two hours on polling day in order to reduce the time lag in the updation of the approximate polling trends, which will be automatically aggregated at the constituency level.
The PIB release said that voter turnout data will now be entered into ECINET by PROs immediately after the close of poll, before they leave the polling station which will reduce the delays and ensure that the approximate percentage of votes polled would be available on the updated VTR App constituency-wise after the close of polls subject to network connectivity.
In areas where mobile networks are unavailable, entries can be made offline and synced once connectivity is restored.
“Previously, voter turnout data was collected manually by Sector Officers and relayed to Returning Officers (ROs) via phone calls, SMS, or messaging apps. This information was aggregated every two hours and uploaded to the Voter Turnout (VTR) App. The polling percentage trends were often updated hours later, based on physical records arriving late in the night or even the next day, leading to delays of 4–5-hours or more leading to misperceptions by some,” said the PIB release.
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