The Secret Ballot was hosted on the Oasis Breeze Adda, which reflected the exact operations of the paper ballot. It maintained the confidentiality of a secret ballot, gave exclusive powers to the election officer to create and view the poll results, opened and closed automatically on the announced time, and made it possible for results to be manually verified on authorized request!
Of course, there were the obvious benefits of an online poll - extended poll duration (2.5 days) since no manning of a poll booth is required, no manual counting, automatic prevention of double voting from a flat, in-built verification if the voter is authorized to vote, and printed reports with due regard to confidentiality.
The best part - residents who were temporarily out of town did not miss the Association election!
The online secret ballot was conducted first, followed by the paper ballot. Since Oasis Breeze Adda contains the complete residents' database online, a simple printout of the same provided the Attendance List needed for the Paper-Ballot - with the residents who had already voted online marked accordingly.
We would let the Election Officer of Oasis Breeze, Mr.Shenoy have the last word on this:
"The Online secret ballot [on ApartmentAdda] was simple and easy to use/understand. It has useful reporting tools and saved a lot of manual effort. What's more, it is Green... no ballot paper." - Balakrishna Shenoy, Director at Deutsche Bank Operations International ( DBOI ) Global Services.
I like the idea behind your online ballot. Every owner should have a say in the association election - irrespective of where he or she is on the day of election.
ReplyDeleteAntony Raj
We are living in an apartment complex having 580 apartments. The association has been registered under Karnataka Apartment Owners Act since last Six years. All these years the elected body carried out the administration of the Association relatively smoothly. Since last year, the administration of the Association, particularly matters related to Financial matters by the office bearers of the new committee allegedly forming a nexus, have attracted lot of criticism by all the members. During the recent AGM held a week back, the members of the Association took serious objections on the Financial irregularities committed by the Office bearers particularly in the award of high valued contracts (Of value approx. Half crore/annum) on an agency who was earlier declared “a non-Performer” two years back by the same AGM. Further the Internal Auditor had also pointed out this irregularity in his audit report that the Association was unable to produce the offers from other agencies if any, invited prior to finalisation of this contract. When there was shouting & commotion from the members about this issue, the president of the Association & Secretary openly accepted their failure. The AGM thereafter formed a separate Finance Committee to go in to the affair and report the same to the AGM later. The Accounts presented to the AGM was hence not adopted . The Bye Laws of our Association prescribes that every year, one-third of the number of members in the Committee shall automatically retire after his/her tenure of completion of 3 years in the committee & these vacant posts shall be filled up by election. Our Committee has total 18 EC members including the office bearers. Last year because of the irregularities noticed in the affairs of the Assn. some of the EC members objected and even resigned before their tenure period. Such vacancies which had remained vacant for a considerable period was filled up by the office bearers about a 2/4 weeks prior to the AGM meeting, by inducting from their own circle thus strengthening the nexus & allowing only the balance 6 vacancies for election during AGM. The newly elected team thus formed a minority in the EC. As per the bye law the new office bearers would be elected among the 18 EC members. The earlier nexus ,who commanded the majority of 12 vs 6 votes, thus manouvred to bring back the same persons as President and Secretary. All the members of the association feel that the “committers of Fraud’ , again coming back to Power, may result in hindering the process of auditing of the previous year’s account by the newly formed Finance Committee by tampering with all the records. Is their any provision underwhich these persons can be kept away from interference?
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I have purchased flat at Bangalore in pre-launch offer, the work of the flat is only 90% completed. Now I am traveling to US for a long term. I am planning to register the apartment, before going abroad. Will this create any issues in future?
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