Software Development & Services for the Electoral Roll / ID Card Preparation for India
The Opportunity
The Election Commission of India is a permanent constitutional body responsible for superintendence, direction and control of the entire process of conduct elections to the Parliament and Legislatures of every state and to the offices of President and Vice-President of India. In August 1993, the Election Commission of India had decided to prepare EPIC (Elector’s Photo Identity Card) for voters in the country in order to improve transparency and fairness in the Election process. It also decided to prepare electronic electoral roll in all the states of India, in order to improve quality and accuracy of the electoral roll.
The Project had many interesting opportunities and challenges, which are as follows:
- The project was to be completed across India for approximately 70 crores voters in 9 months of time before the election, which was due in the year 1996.
- The project was to be executed at all the polling station across the country. The villages / towns located in geographically difficult and sensitive terrain like the State of Arunachal Pradesh, where arranging logistics to carry out operations such as Photography and preparation of voter id card facility in multiple locations and to finish project in time was interesting opportunity by itself.
- The project required capturing of photographs, preparation of electoral rolls from Manuscript, production of Miniature sheet and Voter photo ID card in bilingual with respect to each State in a highly cost effective manner. In addition to this, the project required strict compliance with security features, ease of deployment & usage and maintenance of standards set by the Election Commission.
- To manage the logistics and photographers was one of the major challenges.
- To get correction of manual electoral roll during the process, where getting right information might take time due to field level verifications had further added to the complication of the project.
- Meager availability of travel, transportation facility and electricity caused a further challenge.
The Newgen Solution
Newgen, the pioneers in India of Image Processing, Document Imaging and Electronic Document Management system offered its technology expertise in the form of a software package to prepare Electronic Electoral Roll and EPIC. The State of Orissa was one of the first, which used Newgen’s technology and software to complete the preparation of electoral roll and EPIC within prescribed time by complying with the quality norms.
Newgen’s Voter Identity Card package was the first such package in the country, which converted video photographs or manual photographs into electronic images. This was the time when in India Video Cameras or Digital Cameras were not available in large numbers. That helped in large measures to capture photographs in difficult terrains where no electricity was available.
This work of Newgen in production of Voters Id cards and Electronic electoral roll had helped the Election Commission to standardize the voters identity cards production norms including data security, using ISCII (Indian Standard Code for Information Interchange), size of the voter id card, usage & positioning of holograms, thickness of paper used for card and pouch to cover the card etc.
Newgen had created distinction of setting up of large IT facility at multiple locations in various States where 200 to 500 operators in a shift worked for processing voter identity cards.
Newgen overcame various technological challenges by providing above innovative software.
- Photographs
- Still photography was costly
- Newgen introduced Video technology to capture voters images
- Developed technology, which can control VCR and help to grab the voter image
- Language
- Provided bilingual data entry for state, so regional level information in ID card could be read and used.
- More than 14 languages supported (including Urdu)
- Keyboard mapping
- Supported ISCII (Indian Standard Code for Information Interchange)
- Printing
- Electoral roll, Miniature sheet, summary sheet and photo ID card printing.
- Introduced high speed Laser printing
- Operation Challenges:
- Tie-up with all election offices at district, assembly and block level
- Hiring and training of videographer in bulk to carry operations
- Hiring & training of manpower for bilingual data entry
- Coordination with election officer to get information on time
- Movement in district location, which were sensitive and highly remote
- Multi phase Videography
- Handling of logistic
- More than 1000+ of video camera at a time
- More than 3000+ VCR
- More than 100+ Lamination machines
- 800+ manpower in day
- Managed High Speed Printer, computers etc
- Distributed logistic handling and central processing
- Produce 300000+ ID Cards in day.
- Information update from district level to state level.
Newgen Software successfully processed more than 200 million voter ID cards.
Project Coverage: Newgen covered most of State either by themselves or thru partners. Few States are mentioned below:
- Government of Uttar Pradesh, India
- Bilingual support [Devnagri & English]
- 185 Million ID Cards processed
- Government of Orissa, India
- Bilingual support [Oriya & English]
- 21 Million ID Cards processed
- Government of Andhra Pradesh, India
- Bilingual support [Telgu & English]
- 7 Million ID Cards processed
- Newgen provided a state of the art technology to its partner for processing the voter ID Cards in states like
- Bihar (60 Million)
- West Bengal (2.5 Million)
- Rajasthan (2 Million)
- Gujrat (1.5 Million)
- Arunachal Pradesh (1 Million)
The Benefits
- Newgen technologies provided solution, which became a benchmark. It enabled the Election Commission to execute projects on a common platform.
- Since 1993, a lot of changes have happened in photo ID Card preparation, but all are improved on the base technology provided by Newgen.
- Newgen developed robust processes to execute projects in all the geographies.
- Newgen successfully managed huge logistics to handle the project on time.
- Election Commission successfully completed its phase I project on time.
