VIJAYAWADA: Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Gopal Krishna Dwivedi has launched a mobile application MyVoteQ for voters to know about the number of voters in the queue and plan their visit to the polling station for casting their vote. The CEO came up with the facility after noticing the low turn out of voters, particularly in urban areas, in the last elections.
Less than 50 per cent polling was recorded in 351 polling stations located under 10 Assembly constituencies in Andhra Pradesh in the 2014 elections.
Of all the 10 Assembly constituencies, except Paderu constituency (42 polling stations) in Visakhapatnam district, all the remaining nine are located in cities and adjacent to cities. They include: Nellore City (40 polling stations), Nellore Rural (60), Kurnool (53), Tirupati (39), Kadapa (30), Visakhapatnam West (30), Visakhapatnam North (26), Visakhapatnam East (12) and Anantapur Urban (19). In polling station No. 127 under Visakhapatnam West constituency, a record low polling of 10.22% was recorded in the 2014 polls, whereas low turnout of 14.49,15.57 and 19.97 was recorded in polling stations 129, 119 and 121, respectively of the same constituency.
The CEO launched the app after knowing that some of the voters particularly in urban areas are not showing interest to exercise their franchise as they have to wait in queue for a long time. Queue status will be entered by the designated election staff from the polling booth and the information gets updated every 15 minutes and will facilitate the voters to get latest information of the voters in the queue through the MyVoteQ app and can plan their visit to polling station for voting.