Lucknow: The location of polling stations, their electoral roll and contact details of poll-related officers in all states will soon be available on the website of Election Commission of India (ECI) on a Google map.
Beginning from Delhi and Himachal Pradesh, the commission has plotted all the polling stations on Google maps last week. The move is important for both the states as Assembly elections are already in process in Himachal Pradesh whereas the polls are scheduled in Delhi in 2013.
In other states, the process of collecting geographical coordinates of the polling stations and uploading details of officers concerned is under process. In Uttar Pradesh, the process was started only a week back. UP Chief Electoral Officer Umesh Sinha said that process of collection of longitudes and latitudes of polling stations will be completed in November.
A district election official goes to a polling station and sends an SMS from there to a particular number of EC. The server of EC automatically traces the location from where the SMS has been sent and identifies its coordinates. Sinha said that district administrations have been assigned the task to send officers to polling station to send the SMS. He said EC has developed an application to upload information relevant to a particular polling station on the map. He said that the maps of polling stations of UP will also show photographs of poll related officers.
The commission officials are hopeful that electors and political parties will find the facility useful for smooth and active participation in the electoral process as they would be able to see the location of their polling stations in advance.
Source: TOI
