It's official. Senior citizens, polling officials, COVID-19 patients and those under quarantined will be able to vote remotely using "e-voting" in the upcoming Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) elections. However, MediaNama has learnt, instead of going with the initial plan of using facial recognition technology (FRT) to authenticate voters, the voting system will use Aadhaar-enabled OTP to facilitate voting from mobile devices. FRT data, will however, still be collected to improve the detection algorithm. The Telangana State Election Commission (TSEC) seems to have great hopes for the system. It has decided that — pending its success in the GHMC elections — e-voting will be expanded to the Warangal and Khammam corporation elections that are expected to happen in 2021. This is the first time that e-voting will be used in any election — local, state or Parliamentary — in the country. Telangana was also the first state to use FRT in local elections. State Election Commissioner C Parthasarathi convened a high-level meeting with officials from the state IT department on Monday, according to a government release. The e-voting system is being developed by the IT department and supported by the state-founded Centre for Good Governance (CGG), both of which were represented in the meeting. The officials discussed about how voters will register themselves for e-voting, and how to protect voter secrecy. Parthasarathi reportedly directed the IT department and CGG to develop and hand over the e-voting software. Speaking to MediaNama, state IT secretary Jayesh Ranjan, who was at the meeting, said…
