Hyderabad: In a significant step that will help in preventing rigging and fake voting in Indian elections, Hyderabad-based ECIL has developed a biometric-enabled mobile terminal for an instant identity authentication of a voter. The mobile terminal named Pragya will use biometric information from Aadhaar and will be set up near Electronic Voting Machine (EVM).
According to Electronics Corporation of India Ltd (ECIL) senior manager Ashok Kumar Yadav, “The Election Commission of India (ECI) has used the Pragya machine in Kolhapur, Maharashtra during recent elections. It has been a very successfully used.” Till August 2015, the Election Commission was working on seeding Aadhaar data with that of the voter ID card in an attempt to weed out fake voters. However, the poll panel stopped this exercise after the Supreme Court ruled that Aadhaar should not made be compulsory for anything other than PDS and LPG distribution.
“Pragya differs from other biometric devices as it is tablet-based device and will show the details of the person on full screen with the picture. Apart from voting, it can be used for government national ID and civil ID projects and by police and law enforcement agencies,” the ECIL official explained. ECIL has showcased this device at Pride of India Expo during the Indian Science congress at Tirupati.
