BENGALURU: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has decided to rope in students from various colleges to assist it in finding violations of poll code of conduct committed online. This apart, it will also deploy web crawlers on different websites during elections for the same purpose.Speaking to The New Indian Express, Surya Sen A V, Joint Chief Electoral Officer, said that the special teams have been formed by ECI specially for the purpose. “We already have 10-15 people monitoring the activities of different political parties in the web. Moreover, we have also deputed 10-15 college students as interns to monitor the web for any violations,” he said.
The students participating in the exercise are pursuing engineering, law and journalism courses in different colleges in State. ECI had roped them and provided training a month before the poll code of conduct was announced, he said. The students deputed for the exercise will work from their homes or hostels and will not work from a centralised office. Apart from the said team at the Bengaluru office of EC, teams will also be deputed in district centres for the purpose. “These teams will also have few interns to assist them in the purpose,” he said.
Using spiders
Surya Sen A V, Joint Chief Electoral Officer, said ECI will also be using spiders or web crawlers to detect poll code violation online by political parties or candidates. Crawlers are computer programmes that are designed to browse a web page, typically used for indexing web pages, which can be extended to spot violations of the poll code.
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