The Hindu : Business : ITI gets a shot at new voting machine

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Aug 14, 2004

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Business

ITI gets a shot at new voting machine

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE, AUG 13. The Bangalore headquartered telecom equipment maker, ITI, may get a shot at the electronic voting machine market (EVM), if a new prototype in its possession pans out, the company's Chairman and Managing Director, Y. K. Pande, told reporters here on Friday.

N. Arunkumar and P. L. Arunkumar, postgraduate engineering students working on real time embedded systems at M. S. Ramiah School of Advanced Studies, here, developed the prototype.

B. R. Prabhakar, Chief Executive Officer of Gokula Education Foundation, which runs the school, handed over the prototype and related technical documentation to Mr. Pande, here on Friday.

If ITI finds the prototype holds promise and can be developed into a commercial EVM that passes muster all the security checks thrown at it, the public sector company may have a product competing with those of Bharat Electronics Ltd., also based in Bangalore, and Hyderabad based Electronics Corporation of India Ltd.

BEL and ECIL supplied close to a million EVMs for the recent general elections in May, an order worth some Rs. 900 crores.

Mr. Pande said, "Once the assessment of the product is over, we should be able to bring out a production model in six months, after which the price of EVM will be determined."

The EVM would be evaluated for compliance with specifications set by the Election Commission of India. ITI could then enter into a production agreement with the poll panel, Mr. Pandey said.

MSRAS, in a release said, the prototype could handle simultaneous elections; it has "better security against misuse during booth capturing and better counting facility compared with existing EVMs." Features that could be added on include biometrics, ID card recognition, and e-voting, the release said.

The design of the EVM had won prizes in student project exhibitions held at the Indian Institute of Technologies in Delhi and Kanpur and REC Rourkela, and has attracted attention in universities abroad, the release said.

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