The Election Commission of India has developed the new ‘cVIGIL’ – a mobile app that helps citizens report violations of the Electoral Code of Conduct during their tenure. The app was developed and structured to protect the population of the country from wrongdoing during the election period and to enable them to file a complaint immediately and without delay.

But, to move on to more technical details, let’s understand what exactly this app is capable of.

What is cVigil?

The new cVIGIL app was launched by the Election Commission of India to improve security and fill in any loopholes by creating an expedited system for filing complaints and redress. The app provides citizens with an innovative platform to report violations of the code of conduct and expenses during the elections.

What does cVigil emphasize?

“CVIGIL” stands for Vigilant Citizen and emphasizes the proactive and responsible role that citizens can play in holding free and fair elections.

How do you use the cVigil app?

cVIGIL is a user-friendly app and can be easily operated using any Android smart device.

The app supports every Android smartphone that runs with Jellybean and a higher operating system. All users need is a stocked camera, decent internet connection, and GPS access.

This app enables citizens of India to immediately report or report an incident of political misconduct within minutes of giving evidence without having to rush to the election officer’s office.

cVIGIL connects the witnessing citizens with the election supervisor, the district control room and the field unit (flying squads) / static surveillance teams and helps the teams to generate a quick and accurate report to the action and surveillance system.

How can a user submit a complaint or misconduct in the cVIGIL app?

Users can click on an image or 2-minute video of the violating customer center activity and briefly describe it before filing the complaint. The information recorded by the user is automatically reported to the relevant district control center, which means that the flight crews can reach the relevant location within a few minutes of submitting the complaint.

The cVIGIL works as follows:

Step 1

• To report a complaint, a user can click pictures or record a short 2 minute video and upload it to the cVIGIL app. The user reports the complaint along with an automated location mapping through the GIS (Geographical Information System).
• Upon successful submission, the citizen will be given a unique ID to keep track of and receive tracking updates on their mobile phone
• A citizen can report a number of incidents on the application and is given a unique ID for each report they submit for follow-up later
• Users can also submit a complaint anonymously through the cVIGIL app. In this way, the contact numbers and profile details of the users are not disclosed to the security authorities
• In the case of anonymous complaints, however, the user does not receive any further status reports because the system does not know the contact details of the sender. However, if a citizen wishes to investigate such complaints, he can do so personally from the polling officer concerned

step 2

• When you publish the complaint filed by the citizen, the information will beep in the district control room assigned to a field unit consisting of flying squads, reserve team, static surveillance team and more.
• Each field unit will have a cVIGIL Investigator, a GIS-based mobile application that will allow the field unit to reach the location directly by following GIS cues and navigation technology to take appropriate action

step 3

• After the measures taken by the branch office against the complaint have been completed, the field report is sent via the “Investigator App” to the responsible election supervisor for a decision and disposal.
• If the reported incident is found correct, the information will be escalated to the National Grievance Portal of the Election Commission of India for further processing and the citizen who made the complaint will be notified of the status within 100 minutes.

How can misuse of the cVIGIL app be prevented?

• The cVIGIL app has a number of integrated functions to prevent misuse.
• Here are the important functions to protect the app from misuse:
• The cVIGIL application could only be used within the geographic boundaries of states where elections are being held.
• The app user has 5 minutes to report an incident post by clicking on the picture or a video. The app does not allow the user to upload pre-recorded pictures / videos. The app also does not allow the user to save photos / videos that have been clicked on in the cVIGIL app.
• In order to avoid repeated complaints from the same place, the system enforces a delay of 5 minutes between successive complaints from the same person.
• The district manager has the option to delete duplicate, unrelated, and frivolous cases before the cases are assigned to the field office.
• The cVIGIL application is designed only to file cases related to MCC violations. The district manager is authorized to drop a cVIGIL complaint without further legal remedies if personal complaints are registered via the cVIGIL app or if it is found that the digital attachment of a cVIGIL complaint has no relation to an MCC violation. Citizens are therefore encouraged to use the main ECI website to lodge a complaint or to call 1950.