All districts should ensure strong rooms’ webcasting

Bhopal: Office of the Chief Electoral officers has directed all districts to ensure strong rooms’ webcasting in view of EVMs’ security. District collectors were informed that webcasting of security arrangements at strong rooms is being linked with CEO’s website for people to see it. This will bring forth impartiality and transparency. This was informed by Additional Chief Electoral Officer Shri V.L. Kanta Rao during a video-conferencing with collectors here today. Earlier, Election Commission’s IT Department’s officer Shri Abhishek held discussions with collectors regarding use of Genesis software for counting of votes.

During the video-conferencing, collectors were asked to send compliance certificate regarding security of strong rooms. Links about webcasting of strong rooms should be informed so that they can be linked with website. Election Commission will provide software for webcasting. Collectors were also directed to send reports about counting rounds in prescribed proforma. They were informed that counting of postal ballots will commence before counting of EVM votes. One ARO will enter data of every round in Vidhan Sabha constituencies in the district. One ARO will sit near RO for counting of postal ballots.

District collectors were directed to hold meetings with political parties at the earliest to inform them about counting preparations. Besides, they were also directed to ensure their political agents’ training regarding commission’s directives, webcasting of strong rooms etc. Shri Kanta Rao informed that video-conferencing with district election officers will be held on April 30. Joint Chief Electoral Officer Shri S.S. Bansal, Deputy Chief Electoral Officers and officers of NIC were present on the occasion.