- By Kamakshi Bishnoi
- Sat, 12 Jul 2025 09:30 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
The State Election Commission announced the results of the three-tier Panchayat by-elections on Friday evening, marking a historic milestone in vote counting transparency. For the first time in India, the entire counting process was conducted using 100 per cent Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, eliminating manual errors and disputes.
The counting took place across 221 centres in all 38 districts of the state, where results for 403 vacant posts were declared.
These included:
-174 Panchayat Member seats
-36 Panch seats
-61 Mukhiya seats
-56 Panchayat Samiti Member seats
-70 Sarpanch seats
-6 Zila Parishad Member seats
A total of 207 men and 176 women were elected, out of 694 male and 555 female candidates who contested. The by-elections saw 41 per cent voter turnout, reflecting moderate public engagement.
In a first-of-its-kind innovation, OCR technology was used throughout the vote-counting process. According to State Election Commissioner Dr Deepak Prasad, this system set a national precedent for transparency and efficiency in local body elections.
The control unit of each EVM was placed in front of a high-resolution webcam that recorded the vote count displayed on the unit's screen. This video was uploaded in real-time to a secure server, where an AI-enabled OCR software read the data and automatically compiled the results into a predefined format. Final results were generated as PDF documents without any human intervention, ensuring complete accuracy.
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Officials said the use of OCR not only improved the speed of counting but also removed the chances of human error and objections, often common in local body polls.
This technological leap is being hailed as a model for future elections in the country, offering a robust, transparent, and tamper-proof method of counting votes.
