New EVMs will be used in upcoming elections: EC informs Madras HC

: The Election Commission on

Tuesday informed the Madras High Court that it would use only new Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), manufactured three to four years ago, for the April 6 Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu.

Following the submission, the court disposed of a petition from the DMK on the matter.

The EC's submission was made in its counter-affidavit filed before the first bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy when the PIL from DMK Organising secretary R S Bharathy came up for further hearing today.

In response to DMK's plea to not to use EVMs which are beyond the expiry of 15 years, the EC agreed to use only M3-EVMs, manufactured between 2017-2019.

As regards DMK's another plea for provision of jammers, the EC submitted that the same are not required as the strong rooms, where the loaded EVMs will be stored after polling, cannot be tampered with by wifi, radio waves or by any other methods.

To ensure it, the entire power supply inside the strong rooms will be cut-off during pre and post elections, the poll body added.

As directed by the bench on March 24, the EC convened a meeting with all political parties and submitted the minutes in a sealed cover, according to which there are 537 critical booths and 10,813 vulnerable ones in the state.

The EC said webcasting will be done from 44,000 booths while VVPAT (paper trail) will be counted without reference to 5 per cent mandatory counting.