The coming Tuesday, the day when Hyderabad people will cast their vote to elect local representatives, the city-based electronics research institute Electronic Corporation of India (ECIL) will have achieved a unique feat.
By the time the last vote is cast through Electronic Voting Machines (EVM), the electronics corporation will have completed a record 34 years of manufacturing EVMs and providing support for all kinds of elections in the country.
The effort of ECIL in providing the EVMs for the upcoming GHMC elections in Hyderabad is mammoth.
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The electronics giant is providing close to 9,370 EVMs, which includes reserves, for the 7,790 polling stations in Hyderabad.
“We have already completed the job of carrying out the First Level Check of all these EVMs. We are also taking care of other responsibilities like giving support for sealing, commissioning, polling and counting activities,” ECIL officials maintained.
ECIL has already deployed enough number of technical personnel, including one Apex Level Coordinator, senior officials for each of the five GHMC circles, one experienced officer for each of the 24 zones and two well-trained engineers for each of the 150 wards of GHMC to support EVMs during the elections.
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In a first of its kind, the ECIL researchers said that they have developed a new feature, Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail, which is not included for this year’s GHMC elections, for EVMs. “This feature will print the symbol of the contestant in whose favour the vote has been cast and would be visible to the voter. This provides an assurance to the voter that his vote has indeed been recorded as preferred by him. The printed slip then gets cut and stored in the unit to provide a document for verification,” ECIL officials explained.
Over the years, some of the additional features that were added to EVMs include battery power indicator, power saving in idle mode, time stamping of votes, data encryption and secure communication between the control unit and the ballot unit. Anti-tamper and tamper detection mechanisms have also been built-in.
It was in 1977 when the Election Commission of India suggested ECIL to design a voting machine that will suit the India conditions.
By 1982, ECIL researchers had managed to rig-up a voting machine, which was first used in the general elections for the Kerala Legislative Assembly held in May 1982 in the Parur constituency followed by ten others spread over eight States in different parts of the country.
Later, the fist large scale use of the EVMs for general elections was in 1998 in 16 Assembly constituencies spread over Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and the National Capital Territory of Delhi. After addressing a few technical issues, the EVMs have been used in all the general elections for the Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies since 2004.