Citizens invited to participate in ‘selfie’ contest
Dimapur, March 28 (EMN): The electoral authorities for Mon district have announced what it called a ‘cVigilselfie contest’ for citizens of the district, to promote use of the monitoring tool ‘cVigil’ to check election-related violations.
The contest will be from March 30 to April 9, the government publicity agency Information & Public relations (IPR) stated in its updates on March 28.
The assistant returning officer for Mon district, Thavaseelan K, issued a circular on March 27 announcing the contest, the IPR stated.
The cVigil app is a monitoring tool introduced by the Election Commission for vigilant citizens to lodge complaints against any violation of the model code of conduct and election expenditure by political parties and candidates during elections.
cVigil is an Android application, which will become operational only where elections have been announced.
The IPR listed out the terms and conditions for one to enter in the contest: Download the app from the Google Playstore (Android) or App Store (iOS); click a ‘selfie’ with it; share a message on “Why I would like to use cVigil?”
The user is then to post it on social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc., with the message ‘I am a cVigil, a vigilant citizen for this Lok Sabha Election, 2019. Join me by downloading cVigil.’ Users are required to use the hashtags #cVigil and #IAMcVigil.
Further, the users are to send the selfie with message and screenshot of the social media post through WhatsApp to 7005766737.
The Best three entries shall receive INR 5000, INR 3000 and INR 2000 as prize money, the updates stated.
For those who are new to the app, cVigil app will allow anyone in an election-bound state to report violations of the Model Code of Conduct. By using the app, citizens can immediately report incidents of misconduct within minutes of having witnessed them and without having to rush to the office of the returning officer to lodge a complaint.
According to the Press Information Bureau, vigilant citizens can click a picture or record a video of up to two minutes of the scene of violation. The photo or video is then uploaded on the app.
The automated location mapping will be done by the app using the Geographic Information System. After its successful submission through the app, the vigilant citizen gets a Unique ID to track and receive the follow up updates on her or his mobile, the report states.
A citizen can report many incidents in this manner and will get a unique id for each report for follow up updates. The identity of the complainant will be kept confidential.
Once the complaint is lodged, the information beeps in the District Control Room from where it is assigned to a Field Unit. A field unit consists of Flying Squads, Static Surveillance Teams, Reserve teams etc. Each Field Unit will have a GIS-based mobile application called ‘cVigil dispatcher’, which allows the unit to directly reach the location through navigation technology and take action.
After a Field Unit has taken action, it messages and uploads the relevant document as ‘action taken report’ via the ‘cVigil dispatcher’ to the returning officer concerned for his decision and disposal. If the incident is found correct, the information is sent to the National Grievance Portal of the Election Commission of India for further action and the vigilant citizen is informed about the action taken within a hundred minutes.
The app has inbuilt features to prevent its misuse. It will receive complaints only about Model Code of Conduct violations. The user will get 5 minutes to report an incident after having clicked a picture or a video. To prevent any misuse, the app will not allow uploading of the pre-recorded or old images and videos. The app will not facilitate saving of the photos or videos recorded using the ‘cVigil’ app into the phone gallery either. Further, the application will be active only in States where elections have been announced. The moment a citizen exits an election-bound State, the app will become inactive.
So far, the complaints about violations of Model Code of Conduct often could not be followed instantly, leading to the violators escaping detection from the action squads. Also, the lack of any documented evidence in the form of pictures or videos was seen as a hurdle in verifying a complaint.
Further, the absence of a robust response system to quickly and accurately identify the scene of occurrence of violations with the help of geographical location details hampered election officers’ ability to apprehend the violators.
The new app is expected to fill in all these gaps and create a fast-track complaint reception and redress
system.
