Parties question EVM accuracy
HYDERABAD: Parties continue to raise doubts on the functioning of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) as 11.6 per cent of the machines were said to have been replaced during the Karnataka polls earlier this year.
Though the technical expert committee of the Election Commission says that the sensitivity to light was the reason for the VVPATs malfunctioning, political parties continue to harbour doubts that there is mischief involved.
TS TD president L. Ramana said there was a need to count VVPAT prints to match with the number of votes polled on EVMs. Mr Satyanarayana, project director of EVMs at ECIL, says the problem with intense light can be solved by installing a hood.
Mr Satyanarayana said that apprehension of tampering of machines was imaginary, and unfounded. The read-only single storage chip embedded in the EVMs would not allow for any kind of tampering.
He said, “The program used in the EVMs cannot be reprogrammed in a particular manner.”
ECIL company has got an order to producing 8,07,500 VVPATs to be delivered before September 30. It will manufacture 2.75 lakh EVM units for the general elections. end-of