‘Aadhaar Authenticated Online Elections’ idea declared winner of Mojo Networks WiFi Think Fest 2.0

Mojo Networks announced the winners of its ‘WiFi Think Fest 2.0.’ Soham Sengupta, B.Tech student from Vellore Institute of Technology Chennai was announced winner of this contest.

The second and third prizes were grabbed by Aditya Datar & Apurva Ravetkar from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay and Ian Noronha from IIT Roorkeerespectively. The awards ceremony for this contest was held at the 5^th Wi-Fi Knowledge Summit, an initiative which brings together WiFi practitioners and enthusiasts to develop best practices for WiFi planning, deployment and optimization.

The entries were reviewed by Dr. Kaustubh Phanse, VP, Content and Product Design, Mojo Networks; Raghunandan G, Entrepreneur, Investor and Co-founder of Taxi4Sure; Jayalakshmi Umadikar, Senior Manager - Academic Liaison, IITMIC & RTBI; Devadas Pai, CEO, Nanocell Networks; Osama Manzar, Founder, Digital Empowerment Foundation and Suresh Chintada, Sr. Director, ARRIS Group, Inc.

Expressing his joy, Soham Sengupta from Vellore Institute of Technology Chennai said “I think the WiFi Think Fest competition is an outstanding platform because it values an individual's own ideas. I would definitely like to work to see these ideas implemented for the betterment of the country.”

Commenting on WiFi Think Fest 2.0 Rajesh Gandhi, VP, Carrier WiFi Solution, Mojo Networks said, “Purpose of WiFi Think Fest contest is to get innovative solutions and services by leveraging the power of BharatNet infrastructure. This has been our second year in organizing this contest, and there has been tremendous response from WiFi practitioners, students across India. This is a first of its kind forum that provides a platform for sharing creativity and generating newer ideas which are vetted by seasoned professionals.”

Prominent moderator who was part of the reviewing panel of WiFi Think Fest 2.0 entries, Osama Manzar, Founder, Digital Empowerment Foundation said “WiFi Think Fest is a great initiative to find enthusiasm around and how hungry minds provide innovative solutions to connect the unconnected.”

Exceptional ideas received for WiFi Think Fest 2.0:

First Prize – Aadhaar Authenticated Online Elections

Soham Sengupta from Vellore Institute of Technology Chennai proposed an idea around linking Voter IDs to Aadhaar UIDs. Here, a govt-authorised organization (e.g. Election Commission) creates a cross-platform smartphone app which will turn the smartphone into a pocket EVM. This app will display the list of parties, their symbols etc and have a radio button next to each party, which the voter will tap to cast their vote.

To authenticate identity, the voter will enter their Aadhaar number and verify the same with the inbuilt fingerprint scanner of the phone, or go to any nearby government authorized touchpoint with Aadhaar linkage (e.g. Aadhaar Seva Kendra, telecom operators’ offices, etc.), which can be found in rural areas easily. Once the identity is verified by the UIDAI database, the vote is cast. The data is relayed to the EC servers immediately. The entire process is made possible by BharatNet, which provides secure and reliable internet connections even in rural areas, hence the entire country can vote in unity. 

Among Top 5 ideas – E-Courts for Rural India

Sagar Sathpathy from National Institute of Technology Rourkela proposed an idea around enforcing e-courts of justice in rural India to facilitate faster decision making and promote justice without any hassle. The e-Filing system should be directly linked to the e-Courts website such that the rural people can file their cases and resolve their issues.

There should also be a provision for online lawyers so that the people can seek help online and schedule appointments later in order to discuss their cases. Each cluster should also have a helpdesk which can be sought after in case a particular person faces difficulty in efiling his/her case.

The proceedings headed online by the judge over the internet through any conferencing protocol like TCP, UDP, RTP or VoIP. Real-Time Protocol (RTP) being the most reliable protocol is a derivative of UDP in which a time-stamp and sequence number is added to the packet header. This extra information allows the receiving client to reorder out of sequence packets, discard duplicates and synchronise audio and video after an initial buffering period.

Similarly any evidences or supporting documents can be sent through the internet using the WiFi, which will be received by the judge at the other end of the proceedings. The fax machines should have VoIP adapter supported which facilitate sending and receiving documents over the internet.

WiFi Think Fest – Season 1

Mojo Networks initiated its first ‘WiFi Think Fest’ for students across India in July 2017. The contest was an attempt to encourage students to take an out-of-the-box approach towards developing new applications of WiFi technology. Students were encouraged to come up with innovative ideas to unleash the power of WiFi to facilitate the creation of a smart world.

Dheryta Jaisinghani and Akanksha Pandey from Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Delhi were declared winners of this contest. The second and third prizes were grabbed by Amit Manchanda and Soumya Sambit Rath from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee and National Institute of Technology (NIT) Rourkela respectively.