New Delhi: In an effort to introduce greater transparency in the polling process, the Election Commission has initiated the process to procure more than 16 lakh paper trail machines linked to EVMs. The machined will be procured over next two years and the poll panel plans to use them at all polling stations for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
For this a letter of intent was issued to BEL and ECIL by the commission on Friday for the voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) machines worth Rs 3,173.47 crore. Both BEL and ECIL are public sector companies.
The commission plans to buy 8,07,500 VVPATs from the two manufacturers by September 2018. Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi said the move would increase transparency in the voting process and help voter to ascertain which party he or she voted for.
This in turn, Mr Zaidi added, would increase voters confidence in the free and fair electoral process.
The commission in statement said the PSUs would manufacture the machines according to design and technical specifications approved by it on basis of suggestions of a Technical Experts Committee on EVMs which it had constituted.
The poll panel will scrutinise manufacturing and timely delivery of the VVPATs before the 2019 general elections.
These machines provide a paper trail which helps voter to know if the EVM has registered the vote for the right candidate. Recently, as many as 16 political outfits had petitioned the commission to revert back to the ballot paper system arguing that it was more transparent.
