Digital Voting

Our Prime Minister, Sri Narendra Modi, has called for 'Digital India' and is working hard to implement it. The rationale behind 'Digital India' are to address and reduce corruption and to enhance the ambit of eGovernance through it. NDA government has already launched MyGov.in (URL - https://mygov.in) - a platform for citizen engagement towards good governance in India. MyGov.in is a website through which a citizen can directly reach Prime Minister or any other Ministers and give suggestions or register complaints.

In an initiative to further enhance the ambit of eGovernance, Government of India has launched a portal in April 2015, nvsp.in - National Voter's Service Portal. Using this portal a citizen can

• Search name in National Electoral Roll by entering basic details.
• Locate polling station on map.
• Print voter information slip.
• Apply for Enrolment, Modification, Deletion and change of address in electoral roll
• Know Booth Level Officer(BLO), Electoral Roll Officer(ERO)
• Know District Election Officials and officials in Chief Election Office

A step further, we may land into an era of Electronic Voting (eVoting)!

Is it necessary? Many political parties and leaders might oppose it. I hope readers won't ask which political parties or leaders will oppose this, after day long killing of Democracy in Kolkata Municipal Election!!

Can Voting be done through SMS, Internet and Mobile application? A question if answered 'Yes' will save exorbitant amount which is usually spent for election in India. Not only expenditure it will do the following:

• Eliminate Rigging
• Reduce Chaotic situation
• Reduce Political Murders
• Reduce attack on opposition parties' supporters
• Person out of station can also Vote
• Indians living abroad can vote
• Save Trees (being Paperless)
• Reduce long queues at Booth
• Reduce huge expenditure On poll official's posting
• Reduce Expenditure on State & Central Paramilitary force

People might raise questions for people those who doesn't have access to Mobile, Internet and Mobile application, for them the conventional way of voting will continue. In case of single mobile number in a family, there should not be any problem in sending multiple votes from a single mobile, if the SMS of vote carries EPIC voter number. One can not vote twice with the same EPIC number. It is for sure that parties like CPM, TMC and also Congress in Murshidabad will not like this as the system to vote in Bengal as voting by illegal ghost voters plays a major role in West Bengal vote. In most of the cases Ghost voters are dual citizen of India & Bangladesh.

Bharatiya Janata Party has proved by its unique member enrollment programme how effectively this process can be done. Till yesterday morning (19.04.2015) statistics showed 16,97,70,347 people has called the toll-free no. 1800-266-2020 . In the second step of sending EPIC no by SMS around 6 Crore people failed. It proves these 6 Crores are either illegal voters or supporters of other parties. At that point of time BJP's registerd members were 10,00,98,905 excluding those 6 Crores who didn't enroll their EPIC Number. All the Mobile numbers who passed first phase of giving missed call & those passed the second phase of sending SMS with EPIC number are in the records of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

So once again Bharatiya Janata Party has become trendsetter & proved that if you have respect in democracy you can solve the major electoral problem.

We urge the Election Commission of India to consider this option and implement it after evaluating its Pro and Cons. We want to live in a democratic world & don't want to see such picture on newspapers, as given below, on the very next day of poll.