Anne Avani is an MBA student from GITAM University, who completed her graduation in B.Tech. She is busy, along with her five colleagues including Snigdha, Ujwala and others, firming up arrangements for webcasting after attending a meeting at the Revenue Divisional Office in the district headquarters on Wednesday.
It’s a new and exciting experience to webcast something for the government for Avani and her friends. They feel proud about being part of the election process. For students like Vamshi and Ankur Varma too, the experience has been thrilling.
For the first time in history, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has involved the student community in the election process by using their technical expertise.
Around 1,200 students from various educational institutes across the State were roped in to provide technical support for election officials to webcast polling from polling stations, according to sources.
Students from three engineering institutes – GITAM University located at Rudraram, BVRIT located Narsapur and Indur College of Engineering at Siddipet - were involved in the process of webcasting. As many as 80 students were selected from these colleges and were imparted training in webcasting on February 16 by Green Technologies based in Hyderabad. Even the software was provided by the same organisation.
Stand-by contigent
Each of the students was provided with a web-cam, laptop and data card with internet connection to complete the job. While keeping a force of 11 students as stand-by to meet any contingency, remaining students were allotted 69 polling booths.
A live webcast was performed on February 19 from all 69 polling stations and the result was more than satisfactory.
“We were able to use the expertise of the student community to webcast the council elections. This generation will see to it that polling process is recorded without compromising the secrecy of voting,” said Joint Collector A. Sharath.
