Bhopal: Congress develops software to assist voters

In an attempt to harness the power of technology, supporters of Congress nominee of ward no 30 Seema Praveen Saxena used a special software to distribute voter slips on Saturday. This is apparently the first time when such a technology has been used to confirm the polling booths of voters and provide them voting slips from the tables.

Instead of searching for names by scanning the long lists of papers manually, polling booth managers were guiding voters with a mere click on their laptops. After asking for the name of the voter or the family member or the voter-ID number, Saxena's poll managers were providing the slips to the voters within a few seconds. Students of an engineering college, where Saxena's elder brother Sanjeev Saxena studies, were roped in to put the software to good use.

Computer science (CS) engineering student Abdullah Sarfaraj (20) said, "The software was developed using Java language and it's easy to operate. It searches names in both English and Hindi. Instead of going to the table of other parties, voters are coming to us as the software is not only saving their time but is also helping them find their polling booths."

Another youngster from Harshvardhan colony said, "It also saves our time as we don't need to move from one booth to the other to know where we need to cast our votes. With the help of the software, we can find our booths in just a click."

Saxena's husband Praveen Saxena said, "We developed the software after obtaining the permission of senior Congress leader Suresh Pachauri. Most of the members of our family are engineers. By introducing this software, we have found a solution to the complicated process of searching the names of the voters." Some other contenders had downloaded the list of voters on their laptops and were searching the voters' names in the downloaded files.