LS POLLS | Over 12,000 election duty vehicles to be equipped with GPS tracker devices

Jammu, Mar 9:  Over 12,000 election duty vehicles will be equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS) tracker devices for real-time tracking and monitoring of the movement of EVMs and VVPATs during Lok Sabha polls in J&K.

For this purpose, a ‘GPS Control Room’ will also be set up at the (office of) District Election Officer (DEO) as well as Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) level, where in the movement of EVMs and VVPATs will be monitored and tracked through Vehicle Tracking system (VTS) and other related infrastructure and applications.

This system is being put in place as per the directions of the Election Commission of India, regarding the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (VVPATs), about their transportation, storage, security, etc., aimed at ensuring transparency in the election process.

The office of Chief Electoral Officer of J&K has already set the process in motion in this connection.

“It was desired that the handling of EVMs and VVPATs including reserve EVMs and VVPATs, which are carried by the Sector Officers for need-based replacement on the poll day, needed to be further streamlined,” official sources stated.

“The end-to-end movement of all EVMs and VVPATs on the pre-poll days and the poll day (including reserve EVMs and VVPATs) shall be carefully monitored at all times, for which all polling parties or Sector Officers’ vehicles shall mandatorily be fitted with GPS tracking. There shall be real-time tracking and monitoring of the movement of EVMs and VVPATs through the GPS-enabled Vehicle Tracking System used in the vehicles carrying EVMs and VVPATs,” they added.

Officially speaking, the GPS Tracker Devices along with all the necessary hardware are to be fitted or installed in the election duty vehicles as assigned by Registration Officers (ROs) and DEO. Tentative quantity of vehicles will be 12,500. This is a tentative number and this number may increase or decrease based on actual requirements calculated after declaration of election.

The installation of GPS Tracker Devices is to be done inside the vehicles. The vehicles would be located at different locations across J&K. A Request For Proposal (RFP) in this connection was recently made by the J&K CEO.

The GPS Tracker devices, as per the RFP, are to be installed in the limited time window as instructed by the respective ROs and DEOs. It is imperative that there should be at least one person (technical expert) per 40 vehicles to install, setup and troubleshoot the GPS tracker devices.

For 700 plus Polling stations, services - fully functional and operational between the period starting from the polling day- will be ensured. GPS based vehicle tracking solution, to be executed for Election duty vehicles will be provided along with a web-based portal with secured login at the office of CEO Jammu.

Each GPS Tracker device is to be mapped with the respective ‘Attributes Data’ to be provided by the respective DEOs and CEO J&K.

Installation, commissioning and configuration of GPS Tracker Devices inside the vehicles and their integration with VTS (Vehicle Tracking System) Software would be ensured.