IIT Madras conducts India’s first blockchain-based elections, plans to scale up

IIT Madras students have conducted India’s first-ever student council election using blockchain technology-based software, a feat that has garnered a name in the India Book of Records, and has the potential to positively disrupt the way we hold elections.

Initially developed as a CSR initiative with backing from a prominent Indian tech firm and the Department of Science and Technology, the project aimed to tackle COVID-19 challenges, especially in accessing medical records and monitoring health conditions across regions.

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The software was first used for the student elections in 2022. The team has been steadily working on it to scale it up for general elections on the state and national levels.

The software used was developed by students of the Webops and Blockchain Club (W&BC) from the Centre for Innovation (CFI), IIT Madras, India’s largest student-run ‘24/7 innovation lab’. The club harbours an overall goal of using technology as a catalyst for positive social change.

Since voting technology is the bedrock of a democratic system, the students were keen on optimising the existing technical infrastructure for voting within the college.

Professor Prabhu Rajagopal, Advisor (Innovation and Entrepreneurship), Anirudh Varna, BTech 4th year student, and Vijayaraja R, MS (Entrepreneurship) 2nd year student, all from IIT Madras, are the co-founders of the in-house startup Plenome, which has commercialised this technology.

Both governmental and private organisations utilise Plenome’s software to manage land and health records.

Here’s a short clip of how the digital voting experience panned out for the IIT Madras Student Council elections using this blockchain-based software:

HOW BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY CAN TAMPER-PROOF ELECTIONS

The journey towards India’s inaugural blockchain-based student council election began with the vision of the W&BC students at IIT Madras.

“Blockchain as a technology for elections occurred to us when we were tinkering about making election systems better and remote voting a reality,” explains Anirudh Varna, speaking to IndiaToday.in.

“We were particularly looking at 3 aspects: how to make elections more transparent, auditable and secure, to make an election infrastructure for voting from anywhere eventually,” he says.

Blockchain technology, renowned for its decentralised and immutable nature, turned out to be a game-changer for electoral processes. The biggest draw lies in its ability to safeguard the sanctity of elections by making them completely secure and manipulation-resistant.

Unlike traditional methods, blockchain offers a shared yet tamper-proof ledger maintained by a network of nodes, guaranteeing trust and accountability in every transaction.

“It facilitates the process of recording transactions and tracking assets in a network of decentraliaed computers,” says Anirudh.

“Blockchain systems are run across a huge network of computers across a large geography and can be tampered with only if a majority of the systems attack the operations simultaneously, which is virtually impossible for any entity to orchestrate,” he explains.

“Added to this, transactions recorded on a blockchain network are permanent, and hence can’t be modified by any single party,” he adds.

Apart from top-notch security, this technology can make elections much more cost-effective. Anirudh says that the team has seen a significant cost reduction in the latest student elections conducted at IIT Madras when compared to previous systems.

“At a national scale, we believe that our system can save cost by making remote voting possible eventually,” he says.

Thus, by decentralising power and eliminating single points of failure, blockchain offers redundancy, traceability, transparency, and immutability—all necessary for ensuring security and integrity in an election system. This mitigates the risks of tampering and manipulation, fostering trust among stakeholders.

SCALING UP FOR STATE AND NATIONAL ELECTIONS

The success of the IIT Madras student council election paves the way for the broader adoption of blockchain in electoral processes. The co-founders of Plenome startup aim to scale up the system to state and national elections.

However, the journey towards large-scale implementation entails overcoming technological, practical, and logistical challenges.

“While improving the current infrastructure to work for millions of voters needs huge upscaling of computers, improving cybersecurity, and other factors, there are also practical issues, such as ensuring good internet connection, making sure these systems are intuitive to use, and are actually deployable across various geographies in India, all while being cost-effective,” Anirudh Varna explains.

Yet, the team aims to solve these iteratively to make this a reality in the general elections.

FUTURE PROSPECTS OF USING BLOCKCHAIN IN ELECTIONS

The pioneering initiative has garnered widespread acclaim from both students and faculty, signaling a paradigm shift in electoral practices.

“Additional improvements to the system are ongoing as per user feedback. We aim to move towards a completely modular framework of running elections, where any commission within an entity can run elections securely with a simple setup process,” says Anirudh Varna.

“In the academic setting, numerous protocols, encryption algorithms, and cryptographic proof mechanisms are under research, and is set to help the field of all decentralized technologies.” Anirudh expalins.

Looking ahead, the trajectory of blockchain-based election systems however extends far beyond academic realms. As corporations and governments recognise the potential of blockchain in securely handling any private data, the prospect of digitalised election systems looms large.

“Some countries are developing ‘blockchain backbone’ systems for handling all public data, which also involves conducting elections and recording the data,” Anirudh adds.

The pioneering efforts of IIT Madras students in conducting India’s first blockchain-powered student council elections have set a precedent for inclusive, transparent, and secure elections, heralding a new era of digital democracy in India and beyond.

From cryptographic advancements to decentralized protocols, the evolution of blockchain promises to redefine the democratic landscape, enabling citizens to exercise their voting rights from anywhere, anytime.