Gujarat government is planning to extend the e-voting facility to panchayat polls, despite the lukewarm response it got in the recent municipal polls. At present, the e-voting facility is available only for voters of all the eight municipal corporations in the state. Voters of district, taluka and gram panchayats are not given this facility yet.

However, before taking a decision, the state panchayats department has started an exercise to collect information from across India as well as from the other countries to find out the feasibility of this project. In the recently concluded local body polls across Gujarat, e-voting was introduced by Gujarat State Election Commission (SEC) for polling in six municipal corporations. However, it received a lukewarm response, as only 806 people preferred to vote online out of a total of 95.9 lakh voters in these six urban bodies.

Gujarat SEC has been the first in the country to allow online voting facility for voters of municipal corporation areas of the state. This facility was first offered to voters in the year 2010. The recently concluded local body polls were the second election where voters were given the facility to vote online without coming to the polling booth by registering themselves with the SEC on their website and follow procedures.

Gujarat

• Capital : Gandhinagar
• Chief Minister : Anandiben Patel
• Governor : OP Kohli