GUWAHATI, April 8 - With a view to ensuring high turnout and encouraging more and more voters to turn up at the polling booths on April 11, the Kamrup Metro election district has initiated special awareness drives in the city.
Dr M Angamuthu, District Election Officer of Kamrup Metro, said that the drive is mainly focusing on polling station areas of the city which had recorded comparatively low voter turnout during the 2011 Assembly elections and the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
He said that polling stations with less than 70 per cent voter turnout in the district in previous elections have been identified and the administration has put in special focus for ensuring better voter turnout in the ensuing polls.
�Various capacity building and awareness exercises with public participation were arranged in the district,� Dr Angamuthu said, adding that as part of the exercise a bike rally was taken out in the city on April 7. He said first-time voters have been identified in the city and special effort has been made to ensure their participation in the poll process.
There are 22,998 electors in the 18-19 years age group in the four Legislative Assembly constituencies located in the city, who are all first time voters. Besides, there are 1,95,713 voters in the age-group of 20-29 years.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and 2011 Assembly elections there were around 120 polling stations in the city where the turnout was less than 70 per cent. They have been identified and special emphasis has been given to the areas falling under these polling stations to increase voter participation.
Meanwhile, the Kamrup Metro election district administration has come up with an SMS-based web application for monitoring the poll process on the day before the voting and on the election day, including collection and compilation of information related to the polling process, like dispatch of polling materials, arrivals of poll parties at the polling stations, status of mock poll, start of the actual polling, any event of EVM malfunction, two-hourly voter turnout, arrival of polling party at headquarters after polling is over, and so on, which were earlier collected through manual system.
Earlier, the compilation of the collected data was also manual and the process was time consuming. With the new system, collection of information will be through code-based SMS sent from sector officers� mobile phones.
The information will get stored in a server and get auto-analysed leading to auto-display in a dashboard, which will be available for all election officers and constituency magistrates, including police officials.
There will be a team against each Legislative Assembly constituency in the data management cell to closely monitor the events online. Dynamic LED display screen will be arranged by the District Election Officer in his room at Sarusajai stadium here.
The four LACs located in the city � Jalukbari, Dispur, Guwahati East and Guwahati West � with go to the polls on April 11 along with other LACs located in lower Assam.
