Lok Sabha elections 2024: In a first, all sensitive and critical booths were placed under CCTV surveillance and live telecasted to the Delhi Chief Electoral Officer’s office. The process was followed in all sensitive areas, a majority of which were in North East and East Delhi constituencies.
According to the sector officer at the SB Public School at Khajuri Khas, Jayesh Mangral, the critical areas were governed under multiple CCTV cameras. “There were CCTV cameras at the gate outside to check the flow of voters, as well as, another facing inside the polling booth to ensure that a smooth flow of voters prevails inside. Moreover, inside the booth, there were 10 polling stations, including one outside facing the queues. These were being webcasted wirelessly to the Chief Electoral Officer’s office where live surveillance was underway,” he said.
He added that this had been undertaken to ensure no ruckus or any unfortunate incident is caused within the booth which will also keep the officers on their feet. Moreover, this also helped prevent any kind of overcrowding inside the booths, according to the sector officer.
On the other hand, similar observations were made by the sector officer at the RSKV school at West Vinod Nagar, where the Pink Booth was stationed at a critical zone.
“There were multiple CCTV cameras set up across the booth with all of the stations having one camera each, all of them facing outside, moreover, another was placed at the Cool Room (resting room) and the entry/exit point in the booth,” said Hari Krishan Mahavaria.
Mahavaria added that the CCTV cameras attached to the mainframe further helped the CEO be kept in loop with the happenings inside the booth at all times. Moreover, he added that at the CEO’s office, multiple officials remained stationed at the control room to monitor the queues at all of the booths where such wire casting was undertaken.
“Sensitive or critical polling stations will have 100% webcasting. This will include live streaming of proceedings inside and outside the polling stations, allowing real-time monitoring by returning officers and the CEO’s office,” Delhi CEO P Krishnamurthy had told the Patriot in an earlier interview.
According to data accessed by Patriot, the Assembly Constituency of Karawal Nagar had a total of 17 polling booths with eight of them being critical, with all of them having webcasting services. On the other hand, in total, there were 6,833 booths where the voting process will be webcast to the CEO’s office.
Krishnamurthy had said that there were 2,800 critical or sensitive polling stations in the national capital.
Following the end of the polling across the national capital, no instance of violence or major disruption has been recorded.
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