Tamil Nadu department works with Microsoft on poll expense tracker

Chennai: In a first of its kind initiative, the Tamil Nadu public elections department has joined hands with Microsoft to design unique software to monitor poll expenses of various political parties, chief electoral officer Rajesh Lakhoni told DC on Wednesday.

Moving away from manual accounting and paper forms, the new software will reduce chances of tampering with expenditure details and also assist in digital tabulation.  

“The software will also help us to keep a tracker on poll expenses and can be micromanaged to all constituencies if required. The software also enables the election commission of India to create a long-term database. A new twitter account for TN public elections department had also been created to make the poll process active in social media,” he said.

Pointing out that the top brass of election commission of India will soon visit the state to review the poll arrangements, the CEO said that the ECI is kept posted about the school and college examination schedule and timings, so that the ECI can decide on the polling date and counting schedule. The ECI officials are also likely to hold their first meeting with district collectors and senior police officials on model code and other poll related issues. So far 43,000 voters from four-flood hit districts have complained about loss of voter identity cards and of this 18,000 voters have been issued new voter ID cards free of cost. A detailed list of all officers including IAS/ IPS and other revenue officers who have completed three years in a same post has been collected and will be submitted to the ECI as part of routine poll exercise, Lakhoni added.

The EC had also started sending periodic instructions to Tamil Nadu, forcing the CEO to set the poll machinery rolling. The elections department had also shifted all its top officers to the main secretariat building, so that all the top officials are available for immediate discussions and corrections related to election process, sources added.

 

 

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