Hundreds of engineers from the State-owned PSU, Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), will be part of zonal teams that will ensure the smooth functioning of electronic voting machines (EVMs) and voter-verifiable paper audit trail units (VVPATs) in over 88,000 polling booths on April 6.
A zonal team, comprising BEL engineers and support staff, will be headed by a tahsildar-level officer. Every zonal team will be assigned 10 polling booths, and in case of technical snags in equipment on the day of polling, the teams will rush to the site to rectify issues.
“They will keep moving between the 10 booths. In case of emergencies, they will rush to the particular booth and rectify the snag,” Chief Electoral Officer Satyabrata Sahoo told The Hindu on Sunday.
Fixing faults
In most cases in the past, simple faults, such as not plugging the line into the socket and not turning on the equipment, among other things, were noticed.
“But in the case of other serious issues, teams have sufficient spare EVMs and VVPAT units with which they can substitute the ones facing problems,” the CEO explained.
Since every zonal team is assigned 10 booths within an Assembly constituency, names and symbols of candidates will have to be keyed in much in advance so that they can be operated readily.
“Under no circumstances will even one vote cast by an elector be disturbed, even if an EVM develops a technical snag,” said Mr. Sahoo.