BANGALORE: Two years ago, when the State Election Commission had to undertake the delimitation of talk and zilla panchayat constituencies, the tedious manual method of collecting, collating and compiling data seemed onerous.

But on Friday, Commission Secretary B.G. Nanda Kumar was beaming when he announced that the smart use of the GIS (Geographical Information System) platform to digitise all information about all villages and zilla and taluk panchayats helped complete in three weeks. The exercise would have taken six months to a year under the traditional manual approach. The high error factor was also dispensed with.

At the press conference to announce the dates for elections to the zilla and taluk panchayats, Mr. Kumar said Karnataka has become the first State to use the GIS.

Assembly constituencies

When the retired Supreme Court judge Kuldip Singh, who heads the Commission on Delimitation of Constituencies, visited the State last year, he was excited enough to suggest that the same technology be used across the country for the delimitation of parliamentary and Assembly constituencies.

Data on about 33,000 villages in Karnataka have been completely digitised using the GIS. That means the actual dimensions of every village is now known to the commission, not to mention details like the proximity to water bodies and reservoirs, altitude and terrain.

SC/ST population

The population of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes has also been digitised. All it takes is a click of the mouse to obtain the figures of the total population of a village, a group of villages, and other details immediately and accurately.

According to the 1991 Census, there were 890 zilla panchayat constituencies and 3,255 taluk panchayat constituencies in the State.

After the 2001 Census, which showed an increase in the rural population, there has been an increase of 115 zilla panchayat constituencies and 427 taluk panchayat constituencies, bringing the total to 1,005 and 3,682 constituencies respectively.

The overlay feature in the software also incorporates digitised information on the course of all rivers in the State, existing roads, National Highways, State Highways and even cart tracks. The complete picture of road connectivity of an area is essential in the delimitation process, Mr. Kumar said.

The technical support for this technology has been provided by INRIMT Organisation.

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