With elections just weeks ahead, the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) presented its report on the sample size of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slip counting to the Election Commission on Friday. The EC is now expected to take a call on the demands of political parties to increase the number of polling stations where paper trail machine slips are matched with electronic voting machine (EVM) results, to dispel fears of rigging.
The VVPAT is a paper slip generated by the EVM when a vote is cast. These are visible to the voters who can see if their vote has been cast as per the button pressed. The VVPAT is used in all polling stations but as of now, results of EVMs and VVPATs are matched in one polling station per constituency.
The development comes just a week after the Supreme Court sought a response from the Commission on the extent to which VVPAT slips could be tallied with the EVM votes. A bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi on March 15 asked EC to give its response on the issue on March 25. The petition by 21 political parties had challenged the ECI’s decision to verify VVPAT of only one randomly selected booth in every Lok Sabha constituency. The petitioners had stated that this would cover just 0.44% of the total votes polled and the idea behind introducing VVPAT in all Assembly and Lok Sabha constituencies would be defeated.
The report titled ‘Random Sampling For Testing of EVMs via VVPAT Slip Verification’ was presented by Professor Abhay G. Bhatt, ISI to the Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora and Election Commissioners Ashok Lavasa and Sushil Chandra. The expert committee at ISI also consisted of Prof Rajeeva L. Karandikar, Director, Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI) and Onkar Prasad Ghosh, Dy. Director General (Social Statistics Division), Central Statistics Office.
There have been demands to increase the number of polling stations where EVM and VVPAT results are matched to dispel fears about electronic voting machines being ‘hacked’ to favour a particular political party. Parties have demanded that at least 50 per cent paper trail slips per constituency be counted to ensure there is no rigging.
Elections for the 17th Lok Sabha will be held in seven phases, between April 11 and May 19. The results will be declared on May 23.
