Cyber-observers for democracy in action

The maiden web-casting of the election process in Kerala found resonance in the cyber world with at least 3,783 persons across the globe logging on to the chief electoral officer's website to watch democracy in action.

The poll proceedings from 83 booths in Kerala were web-cast on the site www.ceo.kerala.gov.in.

Data made available to

The Hindu reveal the number of ‘unique client IPs.' This may not directly translate to that many users as multiple users from one organisation could have accessed the web-cast using the same IP address.

According to sources with access to this cyber-data, the maximum ‘unique client IPs' were registered from Kerala itself — 1141.

While 235 IPs were logged from Tamil Nadu, 224 were from Delhi. The others were Karnataka (176), Maharashtra (115), Gujarat (22), Uttar Pradesh (32), Rajasthan (20), and Pondicherry (3).

That the Indian diaspora across the world was interested in the elections is clear from the fact that 693 IP addresses were from the United Arab Emirates; the others were Saudi Arabia (272), Qatar (184), Kuwait (80), Bahrain (74), and Oman (57).

While 79 addresses were logged from the United States, 32 were from the United Kingdom, and 31 from Singapore. The average user spent about four minutes viewing the election process inside the booths.

In Kerala, the maximum viewers were from Kannur, from where 208 IP addresses were logged. There were 162 addresses from Kochi, 150 from the capital Thiruvananthapuram (this includes the office of the Chief Electoral officer), Kozhikode (110), and Thrissur (107).

In Tamil Nadu, the largest viewership came from Tiruchi from where 104 IP addresses were logged. Chennai had 78, Salem, 20, and Coimbatore, 18.

According to the log data, the maximum viewership of the web-cast was between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.

The CEO's site itself had more than 53,000 hits on Wednesday, official sources said.