• The Election Commission said that the supply of VVPATs for use in the Lok Sabha polls in 2019 was on track and that it was committed to 100% deployment of machines at all polling stations in the future.

About:

• The Commission has placed an order of 17.45 lakh VVPATs to Bharat Electronics Limited and Electronics Corporation of India Limited for use in the coming Lok Sabha elections.
• The EC has enhanced the requirement of additional VVPATs from 125% to 135% considering the trend of failure rate of machines in the recent elections. Besides adopting the hardware improvement for the machines in view of a large number of paper trail unit’s failure in Kairana and Bhadara-Gondiya by-polls earlier this year.
• The Commission has adopted the hardware improvement recommended by the TEC to prevent auto shutdown of VVPATs due to excessive light
• EC has been “consistently and periodically” reviewing the status of production and supply of VVPAT units with the top brass of BEL and ECIL.
• In the last 20 years, the EC has conducted 113 state assembly elections and three Lok Sabha elections using EVMs. Since June 2017, VVPAT machines have also been used along with EVMs in general as well as by-elections.

Background:

• Voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) is a method of providing feedback to voters using a ballot less voting system.
• A VVPAT is intended as an independent verification system for voting machines designed to allow voters to verify that their vote was cast correctly, to detect possible election fraud or malfunction, and to provide a means to audit the stored electronic results.
• It contains the name of the candidate (for whom vote has been cast) and symbol of the party/individual candidate. A paper VVPAT is readable by the human eye and voters can directly interpret their vote as it serve as an additional barrier to changing or destroying votes.
• It’s intent is to have fullest transparency in the system and to restore the confidence of the voters it is necessary to set up EVMs with VVPAT system because vote is nothing but an act of expression which has immense importance in democratic system.
• VVPATs with EVMs were used for first time in a bye-election from 51-Noksen (ST) Assembly Constituency of Nagaland. Goa is the first state to haven VVPAT system for the Assembly elections in the entire state.