1.33 lakh polling stations now available on Google map

The locations of polling stations and contact details of poll-related officers in Uttar Pradesh are now available on Google maps. Once the ongoing summary revision of the electoral roll is completed on January 15, the map will also show the voters' list of each polling station.

The other states where locations of the polling stations, details of officers concerned with electoral rolls are available on Google maps include Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Delhi and Union territories of Dadra and Nagar Haveli.

The Election Commission has plotted all the polling stations in these states on Google maps and made them available on its website.

In other states, the process of collecting geographical coordinates of the polling stations and uploading details of officers concerned is under process. In Uttar Pradesh, the process of collection of longitudes and latitudes of polling stations was completed in December.

UP Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Umesh Sinha said there are 1.33 lakh polling booths across the state and nearly 99.9 per cent of them have been plotted on the CEO's website. Sinha said it was a milestone that had been achieved with the support of the Election Commission and Pune-based Centre for Development and Advanced Computing (C-DAC).

Officials said that geographical coordinates of the polling stations were required to plot them on Google maps. To make it possible, district election officials had been sent to the polling stations to send an SMS from there to a particular number of the EC. The EC server automatically traced the location from where the SMS had been sent and identified its coordinates.

"Polling booths in UP are visible on the map. The photographs of the polling booths and related officers will also be linked with its location on the Google map very soon," Sinha said.

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