Live Webcast of Polling from 178 Polling Booths in Himachal Pradesh

The poll process has been web-cast live from 178 polling booths in Himachal Pradesh covering all 4 Parliamentary Constituencies from all 12 Districts, on 7th May 2014. The NIC District Unit officers in the State were actively involved in providing the live web-cast solution in their respective Districts. The live webcast has helped to bring greater transparency in the Election process besides providing a tool for online monitoring of polling by the Election Department.
The webcast was available at http://himachal.nic.in and http://ceohimachal.nic.in websites. The DIOs/ADIOs/DIAs of Himachal Pradesh created a web-cast link on their District websites for Assembly segment wise Polling Booths covered and these links were hyper-linked from a single page at Himachal Government portal and CEO Himachal website. The Polling process webcast continued from 7 AM to 6 PM on the poll day.
The DIO Sirmaur, Sh. Vijay Kumar took the initiative and demonstrated the simple technology concept during DIOs review meeting on 25th April 2014 through Video Conference at http://hpsirmaur.nic.in/webcast The same concept has been replicated all over the State by NIC District Units which has resulted in such a large number of polling booths being covered under live webcast. Sh. Sandeep Sood, Sh. Sanjay Sharma and Sh. Shailender Kaushal coordinated the activity from State Centre, Shimla. From Chamba, Sh. Ashish Sharma, DIO and Sh. Virender Pratap Gupta, DIA had set up the webcast from the highest number of 49 locations in a district. District Bilaspur followed with webcast from 20 polling booths.
The District wise web-cast links also have videos which urge people to cast their vote and a video of Sh. Shyam Saran Negi, the first voter of independent India being felicitated at the Polling Station in District Kinnaur at http://hpkinnaur.nic.in He had cast the first vote in the general election of 1951.
The Himachal Pradesh State Centre and All District Units have provided the technical support in a big way during the Election Process and the Live Web Casting from so many Polling Stations is a great achievement.
The Chief Electoral Officer, Himachal Pradesh has highly appreciated the efforts of NIC Himachal Pradesh by putting on record his appreciation to the Director General, National Informatics Centre.