General Election – 2009 .................. EPIC's EPIC

My views and Overviews

Nowadays India is celebrating one of its biggest festivals called Election. General Election 2009 will be held in April-May 09. While I was appointed by company to work with the Election Office I came to get myself familiar with working of Election IT Deptt. in Bihar (in the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer, Bihar, Patna.). I closely got myself familiar with the working of the IT Department and the pros and cons of outsourcing of some works to the private firms.

We often hear of printing problems of EPIC (Electoral Photo Identity Card) popularly known as Election I-Card. The difference in photo, Age, Relative name are very common. Though ECI (Election Commission of India) is very rich in IT and manpower they outsource the development of softwares related with EPIC Generation and Photo Roll generation. Instead of developing common software they have handed over the development to SLA’s (State Level Agencies) of the concerned states. The database structure, Input and the output formats of the ECI is predefined all over the country but it is being individually developed in every state. Thus resulting in waste of lots of money and Time. If the ECI IT development Team had handled the development of the required software, the monitoring of software development could had been much easier. The software thus produced can be trusted for better result.

As for news, our company developed a web based software for searching Electors details. At presently it is being used in Patna DM Office as help line software. Same can also be accessed from the official website of Patna, Muzaffarpur, Munger and Khagaria.

The printing errors cannot be entirely blamed on Election Office, as it is outsourced to different Agencies (Field Units) in Districts, but the responsibility remains with the Election Department. The Field Unit members arrange photography and print EPIC. The unskilled employees make remarkable mistakes which we can see in the form of EPIC. Instead of hiring private Firms for the aforesaid job, the Govt. of the concerned state must take this job into their hand and carry out the job more proficiently.

Since an EPIC is a nationally acclaimed Photo Identity Card, it must be managed more carefully than it is being now. For this govt. can form a corporation just as they formed other corporations. Thus, instead of going at war level, for EPIC generation along with photography and corrections, just before the elections, can be omitted. Govt. is also working hard to develop a Single Identification Number to each of its citizens, this corporation can provide help in this endeavor. This can be summed up as killing two birds with a single stone. But the decision of forming such type of department resides with the Govt. Development and maintenance will surely create some more employment options. But India is busy in celebrating a festival. We hope till next election, the Govt. of India will look into this matter and take some positive steps. Till then think rigorously and be positive to cast your vote.