Garuda app to ensure online mapping of polling stations: Chief Electoral Officer, Punjab

Ludhiana (Punjab) [India], October 23 (ANI): Election Commission of India (ECI) on Friday introduced the Garuda app for digital mapping of all polling stations by adding latitude and longitude by the Booth Level Officers (BLO), in order to ensure faster, smarter, transparent and timely completion of election work with ease.

Interacting with media before holding a poll preparedness review meeting at Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) Ludhiana, Dr S Karuna Raju, Chief Electoral Officer of Punjab along with Deputy Commissioner Varinder Kumar Sharma, Commissioner of Police Gurpreet Singh Bhullar, said that through this app, BLOs would upload photos and location information of the polling stations from their registered mobile numbers.

He said that the app would help to minimize the paper works and the BLOs would be able to add voter names, deletion of names or modification of addresses in the electoral roll.

He told that the details of assured facilities including toilets, wheelchair, drinking water, electricity, sheds, chairs, ramps for differently-abled in polling booths would also be added there and can be checked online.

He added that in the next three days, the ECI would complete the entire process in Ludhiana by running the drive-in mission mode.

Chief Electoral Officer Punjab said that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of polling booths has been enhanced to 24659 polling booths from 23211 booths.

Raju said that the Commission was fully prepared for the ensuing elections.

Further, in order to ensure that every eligible was voter covered in the voter list, he asked the officers to run extensive awareness activities in their areas under Systematic Voters' Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) to encourage the voters to participate in the polls besides deleting dead voters and others logical errors.

Raju had detailed interaction with the officers of the district administration on election preparedness.

He also inspected the First Level Checking (FLC) of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) being carried out at PAU since September 30. (ANI)