The Election Commission website

One crore-plus hits, 100 times more traffic than the 2004 Lok Sabha elections and people logging in from Tollygunge to Tokyo? All add up to a triumph of technology over traditional tools in the polls just past.

May 11, the day of the results, was a measure not only of the efficiency of the Election Commission in conducting the polls but of its website too, where results were put up as soon as they were declared.

?The response to the website was overwhelming even for us, particularly with over one crore hits during lunch, the peak time,? said Rajesh Agarwal, director of IT for the Election Commission of India.

The site had the support of a 100 Mbps line. ?Where only a few per cent of such capacity is utilised usually, nearly 85 per cent was used up on result day,? Agarwal explained.

Two websites were pressed into action ? the Election Commission?s own www.eci.gov.in and the chief electoral officer?s site www.ceowb.org. But the bulk of the load was borne by www.eci.gov.in.

?The sites were running parallel but we were mainly collecting and passing on the information to the Election Commission site,? said Puneet Jadav, joint chief electoral officer, IT, whose team manned the www.ceowb.org site.

Among those logging on, it was surfers from the south who scored over those from the east. ?We had many more hits from south India compared to West Bengal, mainly due to better connectivity there. But even among the non-resident Indians, we received more emails from south Indians than Bengalis,? said Agarwal.

The huge volume of traffic led to some problems as well. ?We had to break the connection sometimes so that the polling officers returning from the booths could log on and send us the data. Those trying to access the site at these times may have experienced problems,? said Agarwal.

Another complaint from viewers was that results of some constituencies were not being updated immediately, like Chowringhee still showing Subrata Mukherjee trailing around 5.30 pm, when Subrata Bakshi had been declared winner hours earlier.

?The delay was caused by officers returning, tabulating the data and then sending them. But we were not trying to compete with television channels, who were updating their information via mobile phones,? offered Agarwal.

Internet blogs, too, are all abuzz about the Election Commission?s tech efforts. ?Thanks to Election Commission site that I could collect all the information in 15 minutes flat!? wrote a blogger, tracking how the IITians Party fared in the Tamil Nadu elections.

?The Election Commission?s website may look like just another central government website on the outlook. But it is not. Technology has boldly extended its tail and head into the ?rusty politics? of our country too!!? felt another.