Context:

• The Election Commission will launch a multi-lingual mobile application empowering people across the country to share evidence of malpractice by political parties, their candidates and activists ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, directly with the electoral body.
• Model Code of Conduct Violation Reporting App, was made available for the first time in Bengaluru in the run-up to the recently concluded Karnataka Assembly polls.

Larger Public Participation:

• Through this mechanism, EC intend to encourage larger public participation in checking corrupt practices and ensuring a free and fair election process.
• The application, part of the steps taken by the Commission to prevent abuse of money and muscle power, allows for sharing of photos and short audio and video clips from the spot itself.
• Geo-location of the reported incidents will also get recorded and the officials concerned will immediately receive the alerts. This will ensure an effective response.

Tackling social media

• The growing abuse of social media bots for influencing public opinion has emerged as another major challenge for the Election Commission and plans are on to devise a counter mechanism.
• In order to address such challenges in the cyber world, an entire floor at the EC headquarters has been dedicated to the development of an independent and advanced computer operations infrastructure having full access control.
• A social media cell is already functional.

Source:TH