Election Commission to get 30,000 VVPAT machines by September first week

NEW DELHI: The Election Commission (EC) is expected to get delivery of around 30,000 voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) voting machines by the first week of September, enabling it to hold 100% paper trail-based assembly polls in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh at the end of this year.

The commission, which has a stock of 53,500 VVPAT machines, requires around 70,000 units for Gujarat polls and around 15,000 units to conduct Himachal Pradesh elections. The additional 30,000 machines will complete the requirement for two state polls.

At a commission meeting on Friday, the EC was informed that the two suppliers, Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and Electronics Corporation of India Ltd (ECIL), were running behind the delivery schedule.


“It seems they are a week behind the August 31 deadline... So the commission has decided to impress upon them to expedite things to make good the delay and deliver the units preferably by August 31 itself. This will give us time to prepare the machines and hold the training/familiarisation sessions,” an EC functionary told TOI on Friday.

The EC is expected to hold a major awareness exercise in the poll-bound states to educate voters on the use of VVPAT machines, to ensure that they review the paper trail after casting their vote within the seven-second window.

“There is no proposal to extend the display time as the machine settings cannot be altered,” the official said. While the term of the 182-member Gujarat assembly ends on January 2, the term of the 68-member Himachal assembly ends on January 7.