The webcasting and live streaming of the election proceedings in the selected polling stations across the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation limits progressed smoothly without any major technical glitches.
As announced, the Telangana State Election Commission, in association with Telangana State Technology Services, set up webcasting from 2,254 polling stations giving net connectivity to laptops of student volunteers who were enrolled into the work. A majority the polling stations where the facility has been introduced were located in the areas categorized as sensitive and hyper sensitive besides in locations where there was more than one polling station.
Proceedings in 165 polling stations over and above the selected ones, especially those with connectivity problems, were recorded throughout the day. Senior officials said live streaming of the proceedings could be conducted in only 1,796 polling stations where the signal strength was high.
“In polling stations at 623 locations, the signal was weak and hence, live streaming was not possible,” a senior official told The Hindu . Election proceedings in these polling stations were however recorded through webcameras and the entire process was loaded into pen drives which would be submitted to the election authority.
In addition, a monitoring cell was opened in the TSEC office to continuously monitor the proceedings live and teams of officials were busy watching the developments throughout the day till the polling was completed at 6 p.m. “Poll process has been monitored by not just officials sitting in the control centre, but separate user IDs and passwords have been given to officials deployed on duties so that they can log on and watch the proceedings as and when needed,” the official said.