The move of Andhra Pradesh state election commissioner Nimmgadda Ramesh Kumar to launch a separate mobile application supposedly for monitoring the irregularities in the ongoing panchayat elections has kicked up a row.
The Election Commission of India has already designed a similar application C-Vigil which was developed by National Informatics Centre.
Similarly, the state government, too, has its own mobile application Nigha, which is also a fool-proof mechanism to keep track of the complaints on poll irregularities.
However, Nimmagadda chose to get a separate mobile App designed by Reliance Jio by spending a lot of public money, ignoring both the existing applications, which clearly showed his lack of faith in the government applications.
The state government moved the state high court challenging the SEC decision and the issue might come up for hearing on Thursday.
The state government argued that the new app from a private company is not transparent and not equipped with security firewalls. As per the clear guidelines, the SEC must use government services for smooth conduct of elections.
Nimmagadda defended his move saying he got the new mobile App designed only to make the elections more transparent. Apparently, he suspects that the state government’s app might not take up the petitions against the ruling YSRC.
But the YSRC are said to be of the view that the new App was meant only for the sake of the TDP to malign the government. Nimmagadda says the new App would be monitored only by the officials and not outsiders.
Let us see how the high court will resolve this dispute.
