Centre allows Election Commission to buy new paper trail machines for EVMs (File photo)
Highlights
- Supreme Court wants 2019 election to be all-VVPAT
- These machines give instant proof that vote is recorded correctly
- Centre clears 3,000 crores for VVPATs as sought by Election Commission
The next general election in 2019 will be conducted entirely with new electronic voting machines that print a paper receipt for each vote cast. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced today that the centre is releasing 3174 crores for 16 lakh odd machines to BEL ECIL, and will be ready by September 2018, as needed by the Election Commission.
The decision comes as opposition parties have attacked the machines currently in use as being vulnerable to rigging.
In 2013, the Supreme Court said that the Election Commission must introduce the new machines called VVPATs (machines with Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail) in phases. The court said that the 2019 national election must be run entirely with these upgraded machines, but the Election Commission has been warning that it is running out of time to place orders for VVPATs.
Last week, the Supreme Court asked the Election Commission and the centre to explain the delay in switching to VVPATs which function like this: when a button is pushed to choose a candidate on a voting machine, a slip of paper shows the party symbol of the candidate selected. The receipt is visible to the voter for a few seconds before it drops into a sealed box.
Opposition parties including Mayawati's BSP have asked the top court to order that only VVPATs are used in all elections; if that is not feasible, they want India to return to using ballot papers. Their case was filed after the BJP's outsized victory in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand in March, where they allege voting machines were gamed in favour of the BJP. The Election Commission has firmly rejected the accusations and said that in May, it will hold a hackathon to prove that the voting machines in use cannot be manipulated.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal who was the first opposition leader to suggest that machines had been rigged to help the BJP - he said this was the only explanation for his Aam Aadmi Party falling well short of winning February's election in Punjab. Mr Kejriwal said that next week's municipal corporation election in Delhi should either be conducted with VVPATs or ballot paper, but was turned down by the Election Commission.