Facial Recognition System to Curb the Duplicate Voting was Implemented as Pilot in Nagar Panchayat By-Polls of Uttar Pradesh

The Uttar Pradesh State Election Commission has launched a pilot Facial Recognition System (FRS) during Nagar Panchayat by-elections in Katra (Shahjahanpur) and Fazilnagar (Kushinagar), marking the first such deployment in local body polls. The initiative aims to strengthen electoral transparency, prevent voter impersonation, and curb duplicate voting.

Under the pilot, the system was deployed across 55 polling booths covering nearly 50,000 registered voters. When a voter arrives at a polling station, the application captures the voter’s photograph and matches it in real time with booth-level and central voter databases. If duplicate voting is detected, the system immediately flags the attempt and displays details of the earlier vote, including timestamp and location.

The technology driven solution was architects and implemented under the able guidance of Shri Ashesh Kumar Agarwal DDG & SIO NIC UP with the continuous technical supervision by Shri Shailesh Kumar Srivastava, Senior Director(IT) & HoD, NIC Uttar Pradesh.