Election commission of India not just leaving voters behind but utterly confused – anomalies on the official website

Election commission of India not just leaving behind but utterly confused – anomalies on the official website

The Election Commission of India is a constitutional body with independent powers and is not under the direct control of the government of India. Before 1990 the Election commission was rarely in the news and thanks to TN Seshan who brought it to the limelight and highlighted its independent powers. Today, in 2019 Crores of rupees of the tax payer’s money is spent by the ECI to create awareness among the people for free and fair elections every time. Voter education campaigns in the print and electronic media are run and the most recent one is “No Voter to be left Behind”. A fact check on the ECI website makes one wonder if the ECI is really serious about it. Women sports celebrities such as Mary Kom and Saina Nehwal are the brand ambassadors of the campaign. Even the chief electoral office of Karnataka has posted some great videos explaining it. So far sounds great. But then let us see what is the reality when the common man logs on to register online.

Election commission of India website

The official website of the ECI is NVSP.in. Thousands of people who had enrolled online way back in November of 2018 have no update on the status of the online applications and are wondering and waiting. An example is provided of an online registration done on Feb 11, 2019. More than 50 days later the application status on the tracker has not moved.

Welcome to the official “gravesite” of the Chief electoral office, Karnataka. A “gravesite” in the cyber world is an online presence that is not maintained and is with a lot of errors.

The regional Karnataka Election commission website is www.ceokarnataka.kar.nic.in. What is startling is that the website is not hosted on a secure server. Can such critical data be hosted on a server that is not secure? This is a sitting duck for hackers.

Is this what we should expect from National Informatics Centre that hosts this website? When one raises a complaint on the ECI grievance portal. There is no update and one fine day you receive an SMS that the complaint is closed without any details. There is no accountability and no one just seems to care. What is more shocking is that the official website of a body like the election commission is a “grave site” for the copyright date stamp is still stuck in 2015 and is representative of the general state of affairs at ECI. See image

for the vague reply and closure of a complaint raised on the ECI grievance portal.

As usual none of the officials are available on the official contact numbers. We have made numerous attempts to call the Voter helpline number 1950 for the last three months and not a single instance we have been successful in moving beyond the IVRS which is stuck in a loop. See images.

Can the Election Commission of India afford to commit a blunder like this?

No assembly can be added, removed, or shuffled across parliamentary constituencies by the election commission of India. Every layman should know that any such exercise is a long drawn process and the Parliament has to debate and pass the bill on the floor of both the houses to endorse it. Voters of Bangalore Central and Bangalore North parliamentary constituencies are in for a shock. We are curious to know when did the ECI of India decide to reallocate the assembly constituencies for the Bangalore Central and Bangalore North Parliamentary Constituencies? Click here to watch the Screen recording.

For another screen recording from Click here.

www.ceokarnataka.kar.nic.in. It looks like the office of the Chief Electoral Officer, Karnataka has all the rights reserved for this blunder.

When did Rajarajeswarinagar Assembly constituency become part of Bangalore Central and what happened to C.V. Raman Nagar and Sarvagnagar Constituencies? Further investigation reveals that C.V. Raman Nagar and Sarvagnagar Constituencies are moved to Bangalore North Parliamentary Constituency.

Can the ECI of India afford to commit a blunder like this on their website? In this technological era, even an uneducated coffee shop vendor will ensure that there is correct information on his website, but it looks like the ECI just does not care and has committed a 7 Billion US dollar blunder that cannot be attributed to a clerical oversight.

What happens to someone who registers online as a voter from Rajarajeswarinagar, C.V. Raman Nagar, and Sarvagnagar Constituencies. Who will take responsibility for this?

When the parliamentary elections 2019 are billed as the most expensive elections in the world with an expenditure of over 7 Billion US dollars, can the Election Commission of India afford to commit a 7 Billion US dollar blunder like this. Especially when the ECI calls this general election as “DeshkaBadaThyohaar”

Links to the recording of the ECI website browsing

1. Assembly constituency reallocation
//youtu.be/iEqAAwuo-G8
//youtu.be/lMlZQatB-rM

2. ECI Grievance portal //youtu.be/5vjU5mxcaZg

Questions to the Election Commission authorities

1. Why are the links on your website not working or providing wrong information?
2. Why are the officials designated as contacts not receiving calls on their phones? The landline never works and people who can be held accountable never come on the line.
3. Why is the status of the online voter registrations not dynamic and updated?
4. Why cannot the file format of an address proof be in PDF and why should it be only an image? For example, a registered rental agreement is a valid proof of residence and it runs into more than 3 pages. If the three pages are to be uploaded as images. There is no provision to upload more than a single image as proof.