With the campaign for the forthcoming elections to Lok Sabha gaining pace, the election authorities have put in place a state-of-the-art upgraded cVIGIL app enabling people to inform the Election Commission about violations of model code of conduct.

The application, which was introduced in the recent elections to the Legislative Assembly, has now been made GPS compatible with dash boards being set up at the district and State levels to track the complaints in real-time.

The introduction of cVIGIL in the run up to the Telangana Assembly elections witnessed uploading of more than 5,300 instances of poll code violations, of which close to 4,000 were termed genuine and action was initiated. While the operation of the app was confined to Android-based systems initially, it has now been extended to the IOS-operated phones too, while all the vehicles allotted to the mobile teams have been fitted with GPS location trackers.

The returning officers, district election officers and the Chief Electoral Officer’s office can live track the location of the mobile teams on the field and each team would get information about the complaints lodged in its vicinity in real-time.

Separate modules have been created for DEOs christened as district controllers, flying squads (investigator), returning officers (decider), observers and higher-level authorities, including EC and CEO (monitor).

Quick action

Once a complainant uploads information relating to poll code violation through his mobile, the district election officers concerned should assign the task of checking it to the nearby investigator (field unit) within five minutes. The field team should reach the spot within 15 minutes and ensure that action is initiated into the complaint and send the report to the district-level officials/returning officers within 30 minutes.

Cases location-wise

In addition to equipping the teams with the required technological aids, steps have been initiated to ensure that cases are assigned to the teams location-wise.

“The overall redressal time is 100 minutes and the officials concerned have been directed to adhere to the deadline under any circumstances,” Joint Chief Electoral Officer Amrapali Kata told The Hindu.