How ECI Is Leveraging Tech To Make Users More Informed About Their Candidates: KYC, cVigil, More

Through the Know Your Candidate (KYC) app, one can find out if their candidates have engaged in criminal activities in the past or not.

The Election Commission of India held a press conference on Saturday ahead of the Lok Sabha Elections 2024 in which it talked about how they are leveraging technology to make the whole experience of voting better and more convenient for the voters, the candidates, and government agencies. The Chief Election Commissioner during the press conference talked about the apps through which a voter can easily find out where his/her local polling booth is, and know details about their candidate such as whether they have any criminal background or not, among other things. 

Through the Know Your Candidate (KYC) app, one can find out if their candidates have engaged in criminal activities in the past or not, whether any case is ongoing against them, what assets they have, what liabilities they have and much more.

The CEC, Rajiv Kumar, then said, "To clean up the entire system, we want to use technology with the help of the citizens. Citizens, please be vigilant, in the cVigil app, if any voter needs to make a complaint in situations like if cash is being distributed somewhere in exchange for votes, or any freebies being given in exchange, or of anything similar then one can do so. He/She will just have to click a picture, or type text and send it to us, we will capture your longitudinal and latitudinal details ourselves and within 100 minutes, a team will be sent to you to resolve your complaint."

He then talked about the challenges that the ECI will face in doing all this. The four challenges are the four M's namely — Muscle, Money, Misinformation and MCC violations. He said that starting now, till the end of elections, the majority of ECI's time will be spent in trying to curb these four M's.