Maha EC seeks Rs 1.86cr from govt for procuring VVPAT machines

The Maharashtra State Election Commission has demanded allocation of Rs 1.86 crore from the state government for the procurement of 700 Voters Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines.
"We have demanded Rs 1.86 crore from the state government to procure 700 VVPAT machines," Maharashtra State Election Commissioner J S Saharia told reporters here.
He said that usage of VVPAT machines on a trial basis will depend on the factors like the time a manufacturer takes for supplying these machines; the allocation of funds by the government, and the political parties arriving at a consensus on using these machines.
"If all these three conditions are met, then the SECM (State Election Commission of Maharashtra) can think of using VVPAT machines in the elections to Mira-Bhayandar (August 27) and Nanded-Waghala (October 30) municipal corporations on a pilot project basis," Saharia said.

Notably, the Union government today cleared Rs 3,174 crore for purchasing a total of 16,15,000 VVPAT machines to cover all polling stations.
The Election Commission plans to go for paper trail machines in the next Lok Sabha polls to add an additional layer of transparency in voting.
Voter-verifiable paper audit trail is a method of providing feedback to voters using a ballotless voting system.
A VVPAT is intended as an independent verification system for voting machines designed to allow voters to verify that their vote was cast correctly, to detect possible election fraud or malfunction, and to provide a means to audit the stored electronic results.