Thaindian News

Kolkata, March 11 (IANS) The Election Commission will install web-based geographic information system (GIS) in West Bengal’s polling booths to help the state chief electoral officer track them on his website.

The system will provide a map showing the exact location and nearby landmarks of all the 51,919 polling booths in the state on the website, an official said Friday.

“We will prepare a map with all the polling booths of the state. It will have the exact spatial location of each booth, with their latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates,” said Somnath Dey, officer on special duty for IT at the chief electoral office.

“Boundaries of the parliamentary and assembly constituencies of the booth, along with all the administrative boundaries will also be provided in the GIS-based map,” he said.

The software will give a 360-degree view of the entire area falling within the 200-metre radius of each booth, including approach roads and nearby installations.

It will show every detail of the polling station, such as the number of voters, number of polling and security personnel deployed, details about the current law and order situation and reports of past violence or disturbance in the area, the official added.

While the maps will be accessible to all, classified information will be available only to the election commission officials.

According to Dey, “this will go a long way in centrally managing the entire election procedure all over the state”.

The commission is also trying to put up a picture of each of the booths along with the booth details for easy identification

Plans are also on to use the Google application programming interface (API) so that the exact geographical position of booths can be seen directly on a satellite image rather than just as a map, added Dey.