In view of the COVID-19 scenario, the Wayanad district administration has come up with an innovative mobile application, ‘Poll Wayanad’, to woo more voters to polling booths and maintain COVID protocol by controlling the crowd in booths.
Perhaps the first such in the country, the application can also clarify doubts voters have such as if a booth is busy and the approximate waiting time before casting the ballot at a booth, said District collector and district electoral officer Adeela Abdulla.
The idea for creating such an app that can reduce the rush in polling booths in view of the pandemic was proposed by three Computer Science Engineering students — E.P. Aslam, Abhiram K Pradeep, and P. Abhinav — of the Government Engineering College, Mananthavady, before the Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) in the district. The application has been developed with the support of the Kerala State IT Mission and the National Informatics Centre.
Hourly update
The details of 412 polling booths of 948 booths in three Assembly segments in the district will be available at the fingertips of voters with the assistance of webcasting facilities, said Ms. Abdulla.
Starting from 7 a.m. on the poll day on Tuesday, operators of Akshaya Kendras in the selected booths with network connection would update the number of voters in queue at a specific time. This would be updated every hour until the end of polling, she said.
Four control rooms, including one each in each Assembly segment, and a main control room at the Collectorate have been set up, and as many as 45 officials deployed at control rooms. The mobile application is available on Google Play Store. It is also available on the website www.wayanad.gov.in.
