TS develops smartphone based e-voting solution

Dry run to be conducted in Khammam district

Published - October 06, 2021 09:57 pm IST - HYDERABAD

A dry run of the country’s first smartphone-based e-voting solution developed in Telangana is to be conducted later this month in Khammam district.

An initiative involving Telangana State Election Commission, Emerging Technologies Wing of the State IT Department and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, it followed the Commission mooting e-voting facility for certain sections of voters. The list comprised persons with disabilities (PWD), senior citizens, those employed in notified essential services, polling personnel, IT professionals as well as those sick.

While the Emerging Technologies Wing provided implementation support, technical development was undertaken by CDAC. The technical development was also guided by an expert committee comprising Director of IIT Bhilai and Technical advisor to ECI Rajat Moona and IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi professors, a release from IT Minister K.T.Rama Rao’s office said.

The dry run would be in the form of a ‘dummy’ election in Khammam district. Registrations on the application will be open from October 8-18 and the voting to be held on October 20. The dry run is open for all citizens of the district, the release said.

The solution leverages Artificial Intelligence for a three-factor authentication of valid voter -- name matching with Aadhaar, liveness detection of individual and image matching with EPIC database. Blockchain technology has been used to secure the de-identified and encrypted votes so that they are maintained as immutable record. The smartphone application, available in both English and Telugu, has a detailed help section with tutorial videos and helpline number.

The ‘TSEC eVote’ Android app is a security hardened mobile application to prevent tampering and binds a device ID and phone number to a specific citizen registration process so that only the same device can be used during voting, thus enhancing security. The entire process can be monitored and controlled by the admin using a web portal, wherein the generation/access of results is further protected with the requirement of a physical security token based decryption. The entire data is being stored in the State Date Centres as an added security consideration, the release said.

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