Election Commission of India has operationalised the new digital platform ECINET in the recently concluded bye-elections in the five Assembly Constituencies in the states of Kerala, Gujarat, Punjab and West-Bengal. It may be recalled that ECI had earlier this year on 4^th May, announced the development of a new one-stop platform, ECINET, integrating over 40 of ECI’s existing mobile and web applications. The bye-polls witnessed the successful implementation of some of the modules of ECINET, which will become fully operational in the coming weeks.

ECINET is one of the various initiatives of the Commission taken under the leadership of Chief Election Commissioner Shri Gyanesh Kumar along with Election Commissioners Dr. Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Dr. Vivek Joshi for the timely and updated disclosure of election information for the benefit of the voters and other stakeholders.

A major achievement during the bye-polls was uploading of the VTR trends directly by the Presiding Officers (PROs) on ECINET as against the earlier manual process. This enabled the quick sharing of information, increased transparency and a significant reduction in time lag in publishing VTR trends. Through ECINET, it was ensured that the PROs uploaded the final VTR figures before leaving their respective polling stations which resulted in much faster availability of VTR trends on ECINET for the public. The streamlined, technology-driven system was able to provide timely updates on the approximate voter turnout percentage trends during the bye-polls.

Another major outcome of the introduction of ECINET has been the faster publication of Index Cards, which were made available within 72 hours of the declaration of the poll results. The decision to digitise and fast-track the process of generating the Index Card was announced earlier this month on the 5th of June. Under the new system, most data fields in the Index Card are auto-filled using ECINET inputs. Before the introduction of ECINET, the publication of Index Cards, used to take several days, weeks, or even months as the data was filled and verified manually by the officials.

The Index Card, is a non-statutory, post-election statistical reporting format, developed during the late 1980s, as a suo-moto initiative by the Commission to promote accessibility of election-related data at the constituency level for all stakeholders, including researchers, academia, policymakers, journalists, and the general public. The reports contain data across multiple dimensions such as candidates, electors, votes polled, votes counted, party-wise and candidate-wise vote share, gender-based voting patterns, regional variations, and performance of political parties. The reports can be accessed at the bye-elections tab on https://www.eci.gov.in/statistical-reports.

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PK/GDH/RP

Ecinet Press Release