The official website of the Maharashtra State Election Commission (SEC) experienced a severe and prolonged server outage on Sunday, plunging the crucial process of tracking local body election results into chaos. The technical failure, which stretched through the most important hours of counting, left lakhs of voters, political supporters, and media organisations stranded without access to authorised, real-time updates.
Widespread Technical Failure and Voter Frustration
The disruption started in the morning and continued well into the afternoon, coinciding with the counting of votes for numerous municipal councils and nagar panchayats across Maharashtra. Voters attempting to visit the SEC portal were greeted with repeated loading failures or a blank screen after the initial homepage. Even established media houses, including the Times of India, faced significant hurdles in trying to verify ward-wise results for their reporting.
With the primary digital source of election data effectively offline, citizens were compelled to turn to unofficial and often unreliable alternatives. Many resorted to social media platforms, messaging apps, word-of-mouth updates from political workers, or physically visiting counting centres to get any information on the outcomes.
Sluggish Recovery and Incomplete Data
According to sources, the SEC website only became partially accessible after 4:30 PM, by which time the counting process had largely concluded in many areas. However, the relief was short-lived as the portal remained painfully sluggish. Users reported that pages took several minutes to load or refresh, accompanied by frequent timeouts and crashes, making it nearly impossible to access complete information in one go.
The outage was particularly disheartening for first-time voters in newly formed civic bodies, who had relied on the commission's website as their main source for transparent, ward-wise updates. Results for several wards were either not updated or only partially uploaded long after the counting ended, further eroding confidence in the digital dissemination process.
Administration's Explanation and Scale of Elections
A senior district administration official addressed the breakdown, citing the enormous scale of the local body polls. The official explained that compared to other elections, these polls involve a massive volume of data. Across the state, elections were held for 288 council president posts and thousands of councillor seats, with over 10,000 candidates in the fray across all wards.
"Managing and uploading such a huge volume of data takes considerable time," the official stated. He also pointed to the simultaneous surge in online traffic as a key factor. "Since many people try to check the results online at the same time, the load on the website increases considerably, leading to occasional lags."
The official added that counting at some centres continued late into the evening, which delayed the finalisation and release of exact figures. Despite the challenges, the administration claimed to have made every effort to provide updates as close to real-time as possible.
The incident has raised serious questions about the technical preparedness of election authorities for handling peak digital traffic during critical democratic exercises, underscoring the need for more robust and scalable IT infrastructure.
