The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : BEL bags order for 1.02 lakh EVMs

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Wednesday, Oct 01, 2008
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BEL bags order for 1.02 lakh EVMs

Special Correspondent

Rs. 100-crore order from ECI will be executed in two months

— Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

All smiles: Chairman and Managing Director of BEL V.V.R. Shastry showing an electronic voting machine to Chief Election Commissioner N. Gopalaswami (left) in Bangalore on Tuesday.

BANGALORE: Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) will supply 1.02 lakh electronic voting machines (EVMs) to the Election Commission of India.

BEL Chairman and Managing Director V.V.R. Sastry told presspersons here on Tuesday that his company had bagged the order to supply 1.02 EVMs in two months at a cost of Rs. 100 crore.

He said BEL had inaugurated its modernised Mass Manufacturing Facility (MMF) at its Bangalore complex at a cost of Rs. 7.8 crore to facilitate large-scale manufacture of electronic assemblies, including EVMs.

Mr. Sastry said this would help in addressing defence offset business and meeting the operational requirements of aerospace and aviation business.

New facility

The new facility can manufacture nearly 2,000 EVMs a day. The new EVM will have Braille facility to help the visually challenged. Its memory will last for five years.

This will help record operation of any key and the time of operation. Mr. Sastry said BEL was making efforts to export EVMs. “A few countries have evinced interest in them. But at this time we do not want to disclose their names till we clinch the deal,” he added.

Chief Election Commissioner N. Gopalaswami, who inspected the new facility, said that the Election Commission would require 10.70 lakh EVMs for the next general elections.

The Election Commission needed 1.80 lakh more EVMs, and of them, 1.02 lakh would be from BEL.

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