With the main intention of satisfying the voter with assurance of her or his vote being cast to the candidate of their choice during polling, an additional machine attached to the existing electronic voting machine will be used as a pilot project in four Assembly constituency segments of the State in the coming Vidhan Sabha election slated for 2017. The Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) system will be used in the coming Vidhan Sabha elections in Uttarakhand in four Vidhan Sabha constituencies, informed the State’s chief electoral officer Radha Raturi while addressing the media at the secretariat on Wednesday. The CEO said that the VVPAT made by the Electronics Corporation of India limited (ECIl) is being introduced here in accordance with the Supreme Court’s earlier direction to the Election Commission of India.
She informed the media, “In order to satisfy and assure the voter that the vote being cast is going to the intended candidate, the VVPAT is being put to use for the first time in Uttarakhand as a pilot project in four Vidhan Sabha constituencies. The main aim of introducing this system is to satisfy the voters that the votes they are casting are going to the candidate they have voted for on the EVM. This system which has been used in elections in some states of India, will be used in the Dharmpur Vidhan Sabha constituency in Dehradun district, BHEl-Ranipur Vidhan Sabha constituency in Haridwar district, Haldwani Vidhan Sabha constituency in Nainital district and Rudrapur Vidhan Sabha constituency in Udham Singh Nagar district.
The VVPAT will be used in 716 polling booths in four districts out of the total 10,854 polling booths in the state,” said Raturi. When asked about probable scenario of a VVPAT malfunctioning, she said that in such a case, only the additional unit will be detached from the EVM and the engineer concerned will be called for. Responding to a query regarding the training of personnel on electoral duty in Uttarakhand, the CEO said that the record of training electoral staff in the state was positive, while adding that awareness on the subject needs to be raised in the political section and media so as to optimise public awareness. Informing about the VVPAT, SB Purohit from ECIl said that in an EVM with VVPAT, after the voter presses the button to vote for the candidate of choice, a paper chit is printed using a thermal printer and displayed for the voter to check. “The slip generated shows the voter the candidate he or she has voted for on the EVM.
The slip is visible to the voter for a period of seven seconds which is considered to be adequate time for a person to check the display. After the seven-second period, the paper chit is cut from the reel and collected in a box within the EVM apparatus.
The piece of paper is shown to the voter for verification but it cannot be given to the voter to take out of the polling booth.
One reel of the paper has maximum capacity for between 1,400 to 1,500 chits and the polling booths we will deploy these in Uttarakhand will be those with less than 1,400 registered voters,” he added. Representatives of some political parties were also present on the occasion.