This Assembly Election, Arunachal Pradesh was witness to two very different kind of creativity. On the one hand creativity was applied for smooth poll process whereas on the other hand creativity was applied to disrupt the poll process.
Taking advantage of Information Technology in this poorly connected state, the Election Office of two districts of Arunachal Pradesh, namely West Kameng and Tirap was able to conduct peaceful polling in polling stations which had historical precedence of disturbance during the poll process. It was reported that West Kameng District Election Office led by Swati Sharma and Tirap District Election Office led by Ankur Garg had installed cameras in selected hyper-sensitive polling stations and the entire poll process was webcast. The result; the poll process was conducted peacefully without any untoward incidence in these hyper-sensitive polling stations, thanks to the creativity of these two dynamic officers.
The District Election Office led by a young IAS officer Swati Sharma had a trial during the counting process of the last Parliamentary elections. The idea took off from there. Sharma said that critical and hypersensitive polling booths were webcast.
Even if anyone had an intention to disrupt the poll process, they were discouraged by the cameras which were feeding it live across the world.
Posted in a district which has been in news for all the wrong reasons, Tirap DC Ankur Garg made use of electronic connectivity to compensate for lack of road connectivity, literally.
The webcast was for hyper sensitive stations which had a history related to crowd control. Thanks to webcast, there was no repeat of history.
The voters were exceptionally well behaved, and in certain cases even very well dressed since they knew they were being telecast all over the world, quipped Garg.
In a state, where transparency is forgotten most of the time, Webcast was good reminder. The entire polling process was for all to see.
Source-The Arunachal Times
The other incident where there was display of a very different kind of creativity at two polling stations of 17 Ziro-Hapoli constituency, namely Hari-C and Hija, has left me totally dumbstruck.
It was reported that in these two polling stations the balloting unit was ‘creatively’ tampered with. A randomized name likely to favor their candidate was reportedly pasted over the names appearing in ballot unit so that whenever voters pressed the button of the candidate (the probable candidate likely to get majority of votes in that particular polling station) on balloting unit, the votes would be registered in their candidates favor. I would say, a very creative way to manipulate the result based on assumption that the majority of voters of that particular polling station would vote for a particular candidate. But how on earth they came to a definite conclusion that a particular candidate would get majority of votes in that particular polling station?
This discrepancy was noticed at Hari-C polling station when some 30 votes or so had been cast and the polling officials were deciding to continue the poll with new EVM when supporter of Trinamool Congress along with the party candidate stormed the polling booth and damaged the EVM. The result; repoll has been ordered to the much agony of the voters. Similar display of creativity was seen at Hija Polling station and the discrepancy was noticed quite late demanding repolling.