The Election Commission formally launched its ECINET mobile app at the India International Conference on Democracy and Election Management (IICDEM) here on Thursday, and sought to allay fears that it was keeping all its digital eggs in one basket.
More than 40 poll panel apps for voters, politicians and election officials have been subsumed into a single app that does everything from submitting voter applications and election nominations to enabling poll officials to digitise SIR documents and update turnout on polling day.
A pilot of this app — made by the Election Commission and Tata Consultancy Services — has been operational since the Bihar polls and suggestions for improvement were sought from people last month.
At the launch, election commissioner Sukhbir Singh Sandhu said: “There were a lot of applications and that led to discomfort and confusion in the minds of the people on which to use and which not to use. By combining it, it is a great facility to the people.
“Although sometimes we think that it can lead to greater risk because if somebody hacks your app now, even one app, if there were 40 apps, if one is hacked, the other can function. But I was told by our very competent IT team that they have taken adequate care that this one application is almost next to impossible to hack and that they have taken sufficient measures for risk management.”
Sandhu echoed a fear that former chief election commissioners have privately expressed.
One of them told The Telegraph: “Separate apps were made for specific purposes. The logic is that even if one malfunctioned, it wouldn’t affect the others. What is the advantage of subsuming them into one? Perhaps it is trendy to say One Nation, One Election, One App, but the nature of the EC’s work is that even a minor hacking incident can create major legal complications.”
The app is available in 23 languages.
The EC said in a statement: “Since the beta release, ECINET has processed over 10 crore registration forms till date, an average of 2.7 lakh forms per day.”
