In another first, Telangana develops unique eVoting solution

Hyderabad: A first-of-its-kind eVoting solution has been developed by Telangana with the dry run of the solution in the form of a dummy election to be conducted in Khammam district. The registration for the dummy voting will open from October 8 to 18 and the voting will be done on October 20. The dry run is open for all citizens.

Driven by the Telangana State Election Commission (TSEC), the initiative, which uses a mobile application, will see Emerging Technologies Wing of ITE&C department as the implementation partner while the technical development will be done by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC). The technical development has also been guided by a committee comprising Prof. Rajat Moona, Director of IIT Bhilai and Technical advisor to ECI, and professors from IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi, according to a press release.

The ‘TSEC eVote’ Android app, to be used for the dry run, is a security hardened mobile application to prevent tampering and also binds a device ID and phone number to a specific citizen registration process such that only the same device can be used during voting, thereby enhancing security by design itself. Further, 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. Additionally, the entire data is being stored in the State Date Centres (SDCs) as an added security consideration, according to the release.

The initiative originated from the State Election Commission’s plan to enable ‘e-Voting’ facility to certain section of voters such as Persons with Disabilities (PWD), senior citizens, citizens employed in notified essential services, sick people, polling personnel, IT Professionals etc. Hence, TSEC partnered with Emerging Technologies Wing to initiate the development and deployment of project on a pilot basis by leveraging emerging technologies to ensure it meets the strict requirements of the voting process.

“We are glad to have supported Telangana State Election Commission in this initiative of building an eVoting solution for our citizens and especially those that may face challenges with physical voting,” IT Principal Secretary Jayesh Ranjan said.

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