Thiruvananthapuram: A group of engineering students from Wayanad government engineering college has come up with a web application through which voters in Wayanad can get real-time information on the turnout at polling booths.
The students developed a web application named ‘Poll Wayanad App’ that will provide the details of the number of voters at the polling booths on a real-time basis. Especially when the threat of Covid-19 looms large and crowding at the polling booths would be inevitable, such an information reaching the voter would be crucial and helpful for them and the authorities for ensuring the Covid-19 protocols.
Election general observer for Kalpetta Abhishek Chandra, an IAS officer from 2003 batch belonging to Tripura cadre, suggested the idea for the app. It was then developed based on requirements put across by the Wayanad district administration.
“Though we have 948 booths in the district, we are introducing this service in 412 booths on a pilot basis where webcasting is being done. The information about the number of voters in the queue will be uploaded to the application every 30 minutes from 7am on the poll day by Akshaya’s technical staff,” said Wayanad district collector Adeela Abdulla.
After the election observer’s idea sounded exciting, the district administration got in touch with Government Engineering College, Mananthavady, with the requirement, and the college authorities selected three students from BTech computer science stream for the task. “We were scared to take up the task initially as it is a very responsible job and there cannot be any room for error. But we took it up after our teachers and district authorities gave us confidence,” said eighth semester student Mohammed Aslam E P, who led the team. Other team members include his juniors from third semester — Abhinav P and Abhiram K Pradeep — who together got the application ready in five days.
A trial run was found to be a success, and the election commission was informed about the initiative through the observer. A request has been sent to Google for uploading the application in Play Store. But since it would take at least 15 days before completing the formalities and get the app uploaded, the district administration shared the APK file for the application widely through Facebook and various Whatsapp groups where the booths will be covered by the service, so that the public can download the application.