Smartphones won't be allowed inside polling booths in Karnataka: Reports

Elections are around the corners and all that sates have declared holiday on that particular day. Karnataka Election Board has announced that the electorate will not be allowed to carry smartphones, mobile phone or any gadgets in the polling booth. This basically prevents voters from taking pictures, selfies and making videos.

"They will have to leave it at home or deposit it with the police personnel before entering the booth," Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer Sanjiv Kumar told IANS.

According to reports, the ban on smartphones and mobile phones are since 2008, but it was not implemented strictly in the previous elections. But this time it seems that the enforcement will be strict and people will not able able to carry their smartphone in the polling station during the vote.

Now the majority of voters have smartphones with a camera, and during the May 2018 Assembly election, there were many cases where voters were caught taking selfies while casting their votes and also capturing videos inside the booth.

According to Sanjiv Kumar, this time the security personals are trained and they will restrict everyone from carrying phones inside the booth. He also added that voters can leave their smartphone with the party members who were sitting outside the booth with the voter list, and collect it after casting their vote.

While talking about the numbers, Karnataka as a whole have 5.11 crore voters, which includes 2.5 crore female, 2.6 crore male and 4,661 others.

The quantity of pooling booths in 28 seats over the state has expanded by 7 percent from 54,265 in the 2014 decisions to 58,186 in 2019.

Source