Voting for Kasba Peth and Chinchwad assembly bypolls went off relatively peacefully because of the administration’s diligent planning on Sunday. The “webcasting control room” at 390 polling places for both seats was one of the measures the Election Commission took to keep a close eye on specific voting locations.
Officials along with Pune district collector Rajesh Deshmukh monitored the entire exercise from the control room. They started monitoring the movements at the voting centres from 6 am, while dedicated staff was deployed at the control rooms and voting centres as per the video monitoring system.
“At 390 polling places, including 255 in Chinchwad and 135 in Kasba Peth, a webcasting system was in operation. We closely monitored around 50% of all polling locations using webcasting technology. In the district collector’s office and the election office close to Ganesh Kala Kendra, a temporary control room was put up for this. Using CCTVs deployed at these voting centres, we were immediately connected and keeping an eye on every move of these locations,” said Deshmukh.
The monitoring concluded even beyond 6pm as voters at some polling stations were waiting for their turn to cast vote.
{{/usCountry}}The monitoring concluded even beyond 6pm as voters at some polling stations were waiting for their turn to cast vote.
{{/usCountry}}“After every 120 seconds the video time frame of every camera changes, through these cameras we were looking at the voting process, our election staff, polling agents, public coming to vote and we were continuously monitoring the movement,” he added.
At the Ganesh Kala Kendra from where the election process work is been carried out, here too a special team was deployed for the webcasting control at the voting centres.
Balasaheb Kamthe, incharge video viewing team, said, “We have deployed two staff employees only to monitor the webcasting cameras across the centres. Tht entire process went on smoothly and there were no issues at any of the voting centres.”