Softwares Google Maps To Help Voters In Next Delhi Elections

[eagleye]

NEW DELHI: The next Delhi assembly election may see the electorate accessing Google Maps for various poll related information like location of polling booth and checking their names in the electoral rolls.

The initiative is being taken by the Election Commission to encourage people to exercise their franchise and the national capital is all set to become the first state to have the facility, chief electoral officer of Delhi Vijay Dev said today.

Google Maps provide high-resolution aerial images of urban areas and the idea is to give information to voters through it.

"There will be special icon on the Google Maps identifying location of the voter registration centres. Anybody clicking on the icon will get all the relavent details," he said. Assembly election in Delhi is slated to be held in November next year.

Asked whether there will be some arrangement with Google, Dev said Election Commission of India in consultation with Department of Electronics will finalise the project.

The chief electoral officer said the commission will also come out with a special mobile application to help smart phone users apply for registration of their names in the electoral rolls.

"We are taking a number of initiatives to encourage the youths to enroll their names in the electoral rolls. We will soon come out with a special application for the purpose," he said.

Dev said the mobile application will help people apply for registration of their names in electoral rolls in a hassle-free way as while applying on-line, young people often find it difficult to fill up the required information like name of their constituency and sub-division.

"In the mobile application, they will just need to punch in their names and residence address and all other required information like name of the constituency and sub-division will automatically come up in the relavant boxes," said Dev.

The decision to go for mobile application was taken to encourage youths to enroll their names in elctoral rolls make them part of the democratic exercise.

He said a fresh drive for comprehensive revision of electoral rolls with January one, 2013 as qualifying date will begin in the city on October 15.

The chief electoral officer said people will be able to file claims and objections till November 14 and the revised electoral roll will be published on January 10, 2013.

He said the objective of this exercise is to update the electoral roll by including the names of the eligible citizens who will attain the age of 18 years or more on January one, 2013 and to delete the names of non-existent electors due to death, shifting etc.

The disposal of claims and objections will be completed by December 15 while updating of database and printing of supplementary lists will take place between December 15 and 28.