In a major initiative, the Election Commission of India will soon launch a new user-friendly digital interface for the electors and its other stakeholders including election officials, political parties, and the civil society, the poll panel said in a press statement on Sunday.
“The new one-stop platform, ECINET (Election Commission of India Network), including maintaining electoral rolls (ERO-Net) and managing the conduct of elections, will integrate and reorient over 40 of ECI’s existing mobile and web applications,” the release said.
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The ECINET, a system designed to integrate and automate the processes of the Election Commission of India, will have an aesthetic User Interface and a simplified User Experience by providing a singular platform for all electoral-related activities.
The initiative also aims to alleviate the burden of the users for downloading and navigating multiple Apps and remembering different logins.
The ECINET will also enable users to access relevant electoral data on their desktops or smartphones.
To ensure that data is as accurate as possible, the data on ECINET will be entered solely by the authorised ECI official. Entry by the official concerned would ensure that the data made available to the stakeholders is as accurate as possible. However, in case of any conflict, the primary data as duly filled in statutory forms will prevail.
The ECINET will subsume existing Apps like the Voter Helpline App, Voter Turnout App, cVIGIL, Suvidha 2.0, ESMS, Saksham, and KYC App, which together have clocked over 5.5 crore downloads (complete list of Apps enclosed).
“ECINET is expected to benefit nearly 100 crore electors and the entire electoral machinery comprising over 10.5 lakh Booth Level Officers (BLOs), around 15 Lakh Booth Level Agents appointed by Political Parties, nearly 45 Lakh Polling Officials, 15,597 Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs), 4,123 EROs and 767 District Election Officers (DEOs) across the country,” the poll panel said in its release.
The ECINET has already reached an advanced stage of development, and rigorous trials are being conducted to ensure smooth functionality, ease of use, and robust cyber security measures, the poll panel release added.
The data provided through ECINET will be strictly aligned within the legal framework established by the Representation of People Act 1950, 1951, Registration of Electoral Rules, 1960 Conduct of Election Rules, 1961 and instructions issued by ECI from time to time.
The platform was envisaged by Chief Election Commissioner of India Gyanesh Kumar during the Conference of Chief Electoral Officers held in March, in the presence of Election Commissioners Dr Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Dr Vivek Joshi.