At a cost of Rs1,692 crore, the Election Commission is all set to launch the paper trail system for electronic voting machines. The poll panel on Tuesday informed the Supreme Court that 13 lakh machines fitted with the new technology will be required to conduct Parliamentary elections.
To develop a political consensus on its implementation in the 2014 elections, the EC will convene an all-party meeting in May this year.
Responding to a petition, which claimed that EVMs in its present form were not tamper-proof, the Election Commission told the Supreme Court that the voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) had been approved by the technical expert committee in consultation.
“If Parliamentary elections are to be held, 13 lakh machines will be required throughout India at a cost of Rs1,692 crore,” said senior advocate Ashok Desai representing the EC. The bench of Justices P Sathasivam and Ranjan Gogoi directed the EC to file an affidavit in this regard before the next hearing of this case on May 2.
When the bench wanted to know whether a paper trail containing details of the vote cast by the elector would compromise secrecy of the
ballot, Desai explained the paper strip would be visible
to the voter alone only for a
few seconds.
“This is an improvement over the previous model,” the bench remarked.
On a specific question by the bench if the VVPAT component fitted machines would be operational in the 2014 General Elections, Desai said that although field trials had completed, some fine-tuning of the software was required before the machines were put to use.
On February 4 this year, EC approved the final design presented by the manufactures Bharat Electronics limited, Bangalore and Electronics Corporation of India limited, Hyderabad. A fortnight later, the design was finalised.
EC intends to present the final design to all political parties at a meeting to be called in May this year. Members of the technical expert committee will be present in the meeting along with manufacturers to satisfy all doubts arising out of the deliberations in the meeting.
Desai further stated that prior to the machines being put to use, the Conduct of Election Rules 1961 would require to be amended by the Centre, besides allocation of funds.
Janata Party President Subramanian Swamy, whose petition triggered the Supreme Court to seek an alternate to EVMs, urged the Court to consider putting the new machines in use during the by-polls in July. Satisfied over the development made by EC, he reiterated the need to replace EVMs by citing that in Tripura elections, the ruling Congress party claimed that the elections were rigged.