Computerised Voting Systems Used to Conduct Bhatkal Community Elections
Two of Bhatkal’s largest community institutions now run their elections on computerised voting rather than paper. I co-developed the applications used for both: the February 2024 Anjuman Hami-e-Muslimeen election and the May 2026 Majlis-e-Islah wa Tanzeem election. SahilOnline credited me by name in its reporting on each.
This was student team work, not a solo project. At Anjuman in 2024 the team was led by Mohammed Azaan Peshmam and I contributed as one of three supporting developers under professor Zahid Kharuri. For Tanzeem in 2026, Election Commissioner Mohiddin Altaf Kharuri credited Syed Safwan Peerzade and Mohammed Azan Peshmam for designing the voting application, built within an eighteen-member team from Anjuman Engineering College.
What makes these worth writing up is not the technology, which is unremarkable. It is that a community institution with a century of history trusted software to run the process by which its own leadership is chosen — and that the result was defensible enough for the election commissioner to announce it in the hall the same evening.
The problem
A community election is a trust exercise before it is a technical one. The voter roll is fixed and contested, eligibility rules come from a constitution rather than a product spec, and any member must be able to challenge the outcome afterwards.
Paper balloting solved trust by being slow and visible. Counting ran long after polling closed, results arrived days later, and the delay itself became a source of doubt.
Replacing that with software means the speed gain has to come without any loss of verifiability. A faster count that nobody trusts is a worse system than the paper it replaced.
Approach
Outcome
Independent coverage
Built with
Questions
Who developed the Anjuman Hami-e-Muslimeen voting software?
SahilOnline reported that Anjuman computer science students led by Mohammed Azaan Peshmam developed the voting software, with support from Syed Safwan Pirzade, Mohammed Zayan Kashimji and Mushir-ul-Haque Khan, under the guidance of college professor Zahid Kharuri.
Who designed the Tanzeem election voting application?
Election Commissioner Mohiddin Altaf Kharuri credited Syed Safwan Peerzade and Mohammed Azan Peshmam for designing the voting application used in the May 2026 Majlis-e-Islah wa Tanzeem elections, developed as part of an eighteen-member student team from Anjuman Engineering College.
Is Syed Safwan Pirzade the same person as Syed Safwan Peerzade?
Yes. The name is transliterated from Urdu, so both spellings appear in print — SahilOnline used “Pirzade” in its 2024 report and “Peerzade” in 2026. This site uses Pirzade. They refer to the same developer based in Bhatkal, Karnataka.
How were the results produced so quickly?
Votes tally continuously as they are cast rather than being counted after polling closes, so the full result exists within about a minute of the last vote. In 2024 the Anjuman result was announced the same evening, the remaining time being the commissioner’s formal announcement rather than counting.
Can this be used for other jamaats and organisations?
Yes. The same approach suits any organisation with a defined member roll and constitutional election rules — jamaats, trusts, associations and institutions. Remote voting for members abroad is supported, though it requires stricter identity checks agreed in advance.
Need something like this?
If you are solving a similar problem, tell me about it. I will be straight with you about what applies from this project and what would be different for yours.
syedsafwanpirzade@gmail.com