All EVMs will have VVPATs in Bihar LS polls: Chief election commissioner

Electronic voting machines (EVMs) are here to stay for the upcoming Lok Sabha (LS) elections in Bihar, but with voter verifiable paper audit trial (VVPAT) machines at all booths. There will be no going back to the era of paper ballots.

Chief election commissioner (CEC) Sunil Arora told this to the media persons here on Friday after holding deliberations with representatives of political parties and reviewing the state of electoral preparedness with senior government officers in the past two days.

“The conduct of EVMs was hardly questioned in the past assembly elections or the by-elections held in different parts of the country. The commissioner received complaint of irregularities at six booths out of to the total 1.67 lakh booths in the five states. Moreover, even the Supreme Court refused to interfere in the matter,” said Arora, claiming that a high-level team of technocrats including former IITians were taking care of making the system tamper proof.

To keep the electoral system more effective and robust, Arora said, the election commission of India (ECI) would launch a mobile app—cVIGIL—to empower and enable the electors to report about any attempt to vitiate the poll process. “The app was first introduced at Bangalore and successfully operated during the recently held elections in five states,” said Arora.

The CEC said that the state election officer has been told to ensure irregularities in the electoral rolls by resorting to the practice of door to door verification of the registered voters. “Besides, the ECI has already operationalised a helpline number 1950 to help electors track their names in the electoral rolls and locate their booths,” said Arora.

The commissioner hinted that the ECI might go for phase-wise elections in Bihar, saying that some areas of the state were still under the influence of Maoists and the Central Para Military Forces (CPMF) take time to shift from one location to another and be familiar with the locality. “Number of polling booths may also be increased to ensure that people from the weaker sections have booths in their vicinity,” said the CIC, adding that currently there are a total of 72723 polling stations at 46478 locations in the state.

“The chief secretary has been told to ensure strict adherence to the norms of transfer of the officers. All those continuing on the same post for the past three years will have to be shifted. Number of poll observers will be increased for the upcoming LS polls, vis-à-vis the last elections in 2004. For the first time, accessibility observers will also be disputed to help physically challenged persons exercise their franchise,” said Arora, adding that the political parties were told to appoint their booth-level agents to that they could be trained.

Senior deputy election commissioners Umesh Sinha and Ashok Lavasa, chief electoral officer of Bihar HR Srinivas and senior other officers of ECI were present during the briefing. Earlier, CEC held discussions with chief secretary Deepak Kumar, additional chief secretary, home, Amir Subhani, DGP KS Dwivedi and district magistrates (DMs) and superintendents of district police (SPs) to assess the poll related preparations.

Total number of electors: 6,97,38,208

Women voters: 3,27,77,668 (47% of total electors)

Third genders: 2,299 (0.01%)

Total number of polling stations: 72,723

Number of Lok Sabha seats: 40

—ends

First Published: Jan 19, 2019 11:23 IST