Manual system for panchayat polls

The upcoming West Bengal Panchayat elections starting May 11 will not be using the electronic voting machines (EVM), forcing the state election commission to appeal to other states for ballot boxes for the election.

Using EVMs for conducting a Panchayat election spanning a total of 45,234 constituencies and over 51,000 seats is cumbersome, as well as expensive, felt the West Bengal state election commission (WBSEC).

Besides, there were technical problems in using EVMs for Panchayat elections, said S N Roychowdhury, secretary, WBSEC. For a three-tier panchayat election, there would be many polling booths that would have more than one seat, and counting the vote for a voter who was not voting for all of these multiple seats was not possible using the EVMs, he explained.

Local information technology companies were, however, upset that they had not been given sufficient time to develop the software customising it to suit the needs of a panchayat election, according to industry sources. WBSEC had contacted state election commissions at Orissa and Jharkhand for additional ballot boxes.

"We would use the infrastructure of the Election Commission of India. While there were sufficient ballot boxes during earlier elections, after the introduction of EVMs most of them have never been used for years leading to damage", Roychowdhury said.

The cost of bringing boxes from neighbouring states together with higher prices of ink and other logistics had pushed this year's election budget to over Rs 80 crore. Expenditure on the last panchayat elections in 2003 was around Rs 56-57 crore. WBSEC had requested the state government to take adequate measures for security and post two armed guards at each polling booth.

Around 205 observers, mainly state civil service officials, would be appointed. The code of conduct will be applicable from April 9 for all political parties but would be applicable to panchayat areas only and not extend to municipality areas or the state capital, said WBSEC. The panchayat elections would be held in 17 districts of West Bengal excluding Darjeeling in three phases.

The first phase was on May 11 in East & West Medinipore, Bankura, Purulia and Bardhaman districts.