All EVMs in UP will be fitted with VVPATs for 2019 polls, says CEO

Ghaziabad: UP’s chief electoral officer (CEO) L Venkateshwarlu on Wednesday said the final electoral rolls for the Lok Sabha elections will be finalised by January 4, 2019. The officials said they expect nearly 20 lakh more voters to be added to the rolls, besides 14.2 crore voters already added to the list.

The CEO said he expects the summery revision exercise to go on till October 31 and the officials have also asked political parties to appoint booth level agents to figure out missing names or discrepancies in the voters’ list.

“In Noida, parties such as the Bharatiya Janata Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party have already nominated their agents. This will be helpful in detecting discrepancies in the voters’ list and will also reduce last-minute revisions. Ghaziabad officials have also communicated the same to the political parties but the agents are yet to be appointed. This should be expedited,” the CEO said.

He said that to remove repetitions in the voters’ list, the Election Commission has provided software which will help detect such discrepancies.

“The software will also help find out duplicate entries by scanning the photos of the voters. The software will be operational within a week. The entire idea behind the exercise is to include all persons, especially women, in the election process and to ensure that they turn out to vote,” he said.

Officials added that there will be no delimitation exercise before the general elections and nearly 2 lakh electronic voting machines (EVMs) will be fitted with voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) system.

“We have nearly 2 lakh EVMs which have been provided to us for the Lok Sabha elections. To remove doubts, we will also have nearly 2 lakh VVPAT machines connected to the EVMs this time,” Venkateshwarlu said.

The VVPAT is a method that provides feedback to voters. It allows voters to verify whether their vote has gone to the intended candidate.

According to official estimates, the entire state has 14.2 crore voters. There are 1.63 lakh polling booths across the state.

According to statistics rolled out till September 1, Ghaziabad’s six assembly constituencies, including part of Dhaulana in Hapur, has 26,31,279 voters.

The officials said revision and objections applications will be disposed of by November 10 and the final list readied by January 4, 2019.

First Published: Sep 20, 2018 03:00 IST