Now, Google maps will have poll-related info too

The location of polling stations, their electoral roll and contact details of poll-related officers in all states will soon be available on the website of Election Commission of India (ECI) on a Google map.

Beginning from Delhi and Himachal Pradesh, the commission has plotted all the polling stations on Google maps last week. The move is important for both the states as Assembly elections are already in process in Himachal Pradesh whereas the polls are scheduled in Delhi in 2013.

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 was started only a week back. UP Chief Electoral Officer Umesh Sinha said that process of collection of longitudes and latitudes of polling stations will be complete in November.

A district election official goes to a polling station and sends an SMS from there to a particular number of EC. The server of EC automatically traces the location from where the SMS has been sent and identifies its coordinates. Sinha said that district administrations have been assigned the task to send officers to polling station to send the SMS. He said EC has developed an application to upload information relevant to a particular polling station on the map. "

"UP is a large state with 88,000 polling stations and hence collection of geographical coordinates will take more time here. Each polling station will be visible on the m"p," Sinha said. He said that the maps of polling stations of UP will also show photographs of poll related officers.

In the maps of polling station of Delhi and Himachal Pradesh, however, there are all details of poll-related officers except their photographs. A person can select the state, district, Assembly constituency and polling station names and see the location of the selected area and the electoral roll on EC's website. On clicking on any polling station, the voter will get the name and contact details of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), District Election Officer (DEO), Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) and Booth Level Officer (BLO) and electoral roll of the polling station concerned.

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