Gurugram: Residents line-up for voter slips as EC withdraws Booth App

Voters in Badshahpur gave a pass to the ‘Booth App’, which allowed voters to directly download their voting slips with QR codes and give it to officials at polling

Voters in Badshahpur gave a pass to the ‘Booth App’, which allowed voters to directly download their voting slips with QR codes and give it to officials at polling booths, as it remained defunct. District administration officials said the app did not work because the Election Commission “dropped the plan to use it” late Sunday.

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Badshahpur assembly constituency was one of the three places in the state where the app was meant to be tried. Apart from Badshahpur, the application was meant to be functional in Hisar and Faridabad.

According to voters and election officers at several booths, the app wasn’t able to generate the QR code for the voting slips after the voter details were uploaded. “We tried filling in our details several times on the app but it would not load and go beyond a certain page,” said Vishi Arora, a resident of DLF Phase 2.

District election officers had, after an internal meeting on October 14, said that on the day of voting, 3.95 lakh voters in 362 polling booths of Badshahpur would be able to carry their cellphones and show the QR code generated on the app to the officer at the polling booth for scanning, which will then allow them to vote. This would have saved time and increased transparency.

On Monday evening, Gurugram deputy commissioner Amit Khatri said, “The plan to use the app to generate QR codes was dropped last night by the Election Commission.” He did not clarify why this decision was taken.

As the app was mostly non-functional, slips with the QR codes were handed to the voters by officers at the polling booths.

“We had informed voters about the app and tried to download the QR codes through it but eventually gave up as it was taking too much time,” said a polling booth official at the New Palam Vihar station, who wished to remain anonymous.

The app was experimented with for the first time in Hamirpur district of Himachal Pradesh.