Indian State of Telangana Is Interested in Using Blockchain for E-Voting

The Southern Indian state of Telangana may soon develop and test a blockchain-based electronic voting system to facilitate remote voting.

Speaking at a webinar conducted by the Election Commission of India and Tamil Nadu E-Governance Agency, the Principal Secretary of Information Technology Jayesh Ranjan suggested that the state may initially experiment with blockchain e-voting on a small scale and later widen the implementation.

Members of the Election Commission of India, Ministry of Electronics and IT, India’s citizen engagement platform MyGov and blockchain industry leaders were also a part of the webinar.

The members of the webinar discussed the possible use of blockchain technology in deploying an e-voting platform for Indian states, reported local news outlet Deccan Chronicle.

Ranjan said that the state government may persuade smaller bodies such as civil societies, neighborhoods, and sports associations to conduct internal elections using their blockchain-based e-voting platform. 

Depending on the possible use-cases observed through these smaller experiments, they may move ahead and convince other state governments to use the blockchain platform. Ranjan was also hopeful that by showing the improvements promised by such a platform, they may one day scale the blockchain e-voting solution to be used on a national level.

“There should be a need for this particular technology. One needs to demonstrate that particular deficiencies can be addressed using blockchain and remote voting,” he said.

He highlighted that using blockchain technology was not as difficult as it seemed on the surface. To prove his point, he shared the example of the Telangana government’s T-Chits initiative that uses blockchain to manage chit funds in the state. A chit fund is an Indian version of a savings and credit scheme. 

In the past 12 months, the Telangana government has shown a growing interest in blockchain technology. In May 2019, Cointelegraph reported that it was planning to establish itself hub for blockchain development.