The Andhra Pradesh HC on Friday imposed a saty on the launch and the use of an mobile application named ‘e-watch’ till tomorrow (9th Feb). This app is made for the first phase of elections to local panchayats by the State Election Commission to check malpractice during this elections.
A petition was filed by K. Sudhakar against this application just after the few hours of launching this application. He had prayed before the HC to issue the writ of mandamus and prohibition against the authority of state election Commission.In his plea, he sought directions to the SEC to use either the ‘C-Vigil’ app developed by the Election Commission of India or the ‘Nighaa’ app developed by the State government’s, and not the ‘e-Watch’ app developed by a private firm and brought out by the SEC on its own allegedly in violation of the cyber security policies of the Central that is National Cyber Security Policy 2013 and State that is Andhra Pradesh Security Cyber Policy 2017.Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Arup Kumar Goswami and Justice C.
Praveen Kumar agreed with the petitioners’ view and observed that, *”One of the grounds urged by the learned counsel for the petitioners is that necessary Security Audit Certificate is yet to be obtained and therefore without such certificate, it will be impermissible for the State Election Commission to use the application.”
The court imposed a stay on this application after hearing all the PILs and also allowed the Andhra Pradesh Technology Services Limited (APTS) officials to examine the SEC app.
