THIRUVANANTHAPURAM : Around 15,000 youngsters in the state will be ‘officially’ part of the election process in the Lok Sabha polls. They will be in charge of monitoring webcasting in the polling booths. The booth-level volunteers consist of college students and youths drawn locally.
This time, the recruitment is done by I-Net Secure Labs Pvt, a Chennai-based digital company which won the bid for webcasting the polls in the state. In previous elections, it was usually the Centre for Development of Imaging Technology (C-Dit) or Akshaya which used to webcast the proceedings.
“Youths with an understanding of the working of cameras have been recruited as volunteers. We have carried out their background checks to ensure transparency,” said Maneesh K V of I-Net Secure Labs. “We have received excellent responses from volunteers in the age group of 18-26 years. We gave them a brief training,” he said. But he refused to divulge the stipend details as the talks are still underway.
The company provides the cameras and the manpower to operate them at the booth, assembly and district levels. The firm started the open recruiting process at the beginning of this month. Apart from booth-level volunteers, they have also recruited 800 camera installation technicians, and 170 coordinators at the district and assembly levels.
The Election Commission has gone high-tech by using Artificial Intelligence-based webcasting to monitor the poll process and spot malpractices. The Election Commission of India, Chief Electoral Officer, District Electoral Officer and Returning Officer can view the video based on the logins facilitated by the Video Management Software (VMS).
Chief Electoral Officer (Kerala), Sanjay Kaul, said that the facilities for webcasting and data storage are done based on the guidelines issued by the Election Commission of India.
