Students from Greater Noida have created a smart phone app titled 'Know Your Booth', which will help voters locate their nearest polling booths quickly.
Elections can be a real hassle for the voters who don’t know where their polling booths are. During the upcoming UP assembly elections, however, the voters of Gautam Budh Nagar constituency will be saved the trouble of running around trying to find the administration offices, thanks to a smart app.
Three students from Greater Noida’s GL Bajaj Institute of Technology and Management have created a smart phone application titled ‘Know Your Booth’, which will help voters locate their nearest polling booths quickly.
According to a report by Times of India, the app won’t just help voters find their nearest polling booth, but it’ll also provide a link that will take them to the Election Commission’s website, where they will be able to register as new voters. The application will also allow users to make corrections in their voter identification details, the makers say.
The app has been designed on the request of Gautam Budh Nagar District Magistrate NP Singh. The Gautam Budh Nagar district comprises three assembly constituencies – Noida, Dadri and Jewar, with a total of 12.52 lakh registered voters.
Three computer science students of the Institute – Anuj Omar, Prabhav Shukla and Pranjal Srivastava- worked under the supervision of Madhu Gaur, the head of the MCA department.
The students had only one month to design the app. “We were told that October 31 is the last date by which we could complete the app as the DM wanted to launch it around Diwali. Thankfully, we were given access to the data of polling booths from the Election Commission of India’s website and we worked day and night. The work got completed by October 23,” says Anuj.
“Awareness of the electorate is essential for a healthy democracy. Initiatives like these are essential for India so that the voters are aware and well-informed,” says NP Singh.
The users can install the application from Google Play Store. Presently, the application is compatible with Android phones only. Users need to click on the application and activate GPS location. The application will then identify the polling booth and also provide driving directions from their current location to the polling booth.
The team has plans of further improving the app and enabling voters to upload the documents necessary for registration. “Currently, the app provides a link to the Election Commission of India’s website for the same but we want to come up with a separate section, wherein it will enable the voters to register themselves directly, without going to the ECI website,” says Anuj.
Featured image credit: Siliconeer, Times of India
Android users, click here to download the app.
Like this story? Or have something to share? Write to us: contact@thebetterindia.com, or connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.
NEW: Click here to get positive news on WhatsApp!
