As they cast their maiden votes in the upcoming local body elections in Kerala, two BTech students have become part of the election management process by developing an inventory and management software for electronic voting machines (EVMs). Simply put, the software can track electronic voting machines (EVMs) online.
Aashin C Anil and Jeswin Sunsi, who are pursuing BTech in Computer Science at SRM Institute of Science and Technology in Chennai, developed the software — EVMTrack — for the State Election Commission, which is conducting the elections in two phases on December 9 and 11.
Aashin from Thiruvananthapuram and Jeswin from Thrissur, both aged 20, said, “We are excited to be part of the process before we cast our vote. Our software will be used for online tracking of EVMs in the elections.’’
On how ‘EVMTrack’ will change the management of voting machines, State Election Commission’s EVM consultant L Suryanarayanan said, “So far, we have been manually preparing the allotment of the machines, kept at warehouses. With the new software, the allotment has been made online… From the office of the Election Commission to the returning officer of a village panchayat, the current position of an EVM, its allotment and movement can be tracked.”
He added, “The system enables us to track and locate each and every EVM. Replacement for a faulty one can be done swiftly by identifying the spare ones online. The system is fast, efficient and transparent. At the same time, the tracking system is not connected to the EVM.”
He said the State Election Commission had planned to develop the software two years ago. “We dropped the plan due to a huge financial commitment. Six months ago, the project was revived. I knew these youths, who had taken part in hackathons, and realised their potential. State Election Commissioner A Shajahan was ready to rope in the engineering students for developing the software. The commission has an agreement with the students, who took up the project as a part of social commitment,” he said.
Aashin said the two of them are part of Apple’s iOS student developer programme, in which SRM is a partner from India.
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“The final software for the Election Commission was developed after incorporating views and suggestions from stakeholders in the election process. The security audit was done by the Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) Directorate, (under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India), which is a leading organisation for quality assurance services in the field of Electronics and Information Technology,” he said.
Suryanarayanan claimed that no other state election commission has deployed an online EVM tracking system to a three-tier election process.
