Chennai: Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail or VVPAT, as the facility to keep a verified paper record is known popularly, would be made available in every Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) used for the coming Lok Sabha elections, Chief Election Officer Sathyabrata Sahoo said on Wednesday.
Hitherto VVPAT was made available on select booths in the various elections and there had been a demand from various political organizations, expressing skepticism over the EVMS, to provide the facility in all the booths as it would provide a paper record of the votes polled that could be compared with the results announced through the electronic counting process in the event of a dispute.
Through VVPAT, the voters could check if their vote had been cast in favour of the candidate of their choice as the paper slip would show up through a glass casing in the EVM before rolling down.
Sahoo was speaking to the media after the visiting team from the Election Commission of India (ECI), comprising deputy election commissioner S H Ajay Badu and principal secretary Malay Malik, held a review meeting with officials in Chennai.
He said that the Chief Election Commissioner would hold discussions with representatives of all political parties when he would visit Chennai later on and asked everyone to wait for the ECI to announce the dates for the elections.
On Wednesday the ECI team reviewed the preparedness of the officials in holding the elections and were told that everything was in place to conduct the polls, Sahoo said.
The ECI team said that EVMs should be stored in excess, at a rate of 130 for a requirement of 100, and the State had already equipped itself to meet that need, he said.
On the question of maintaining law and order and in identifying troublesome booths, it was decided that the identification could be done only after the announcement of candidates for the situation would change then, he said.
