Bangalore: Bharat Electronics Ltd. (BEL) has secured a fresh Letter of Intent (LoI) from the Election Commission of India for the manufacture and delivery of electronic voting machines (EVMs).

The order, which will follow the LoI, is worth approximately Rs. 130 crore and entails the delivery, preferably by next March when key States such as Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal are likely to go to the polls, of 1,37,000 EVMs. Though the price is yet to be fixed, sources indicated that each EVM was expected to cost around Rs. 10,000.

BEL chairman and managing director Y. Gopala Rao told The Hindu that the EVMs would have a fresh and improved design, including a new and advanced display system and additional features. According to Mr. Rao, the changes have already been incorporated and approved by the Election Commission. "Prototypes of the newly designed EVMs have been already delivered, evaluated and cleared for delivery by the Election Commission," he said. Revealing the key changes that had been incorporated in the EVMs, S.K. Mehta, BEL's director (Research and Development), said the machines would sport a battery indicator, have an alpha-numerical display system (the older version had a seven segment display system) and most importantly be equipped with a facility for `time stamping.'

While the alpha-numerical display system will increase the number of digits, time stamping will indicate the hour by hour rate of polling, thereby enabling the Election Commission to keep a tab and study the rate of polling in any given voting segment.

The Election Commission's new order has come about thanks to the successful use of voting machines during the parliamentary elections in 2004. BEL, which developed rudimentary voting machines in-house and first used them way back in 1970 during the company's labour union elections, sought the help of a Japanese company specialising in electronic voting machines, in 1989, for a collaboration that would customise the microprocessors that are the heart of the machines.

Each EVM can record five votes a minute or an estimated 2,700 in a polling day. BEL has already supplied over five lakh EVMs. According to Mr. Rao, most of these EVMs were manufactured between 2000 and 2004.

EVMs not only reduce the huge costs of transporting and guarding ballot boxes, printing thousands of tonnes of ballot paper and then hiring staff for counting them, but are also easy to operate, tamperproof and the results are instantaneous. Rigging is also next to impossible. Along with BEL, the Election Commission has also issued an LoI to another State-run undertaking, Hyderabad-based Electronics Corporation of India Ltd., for the manufacture of 1,14,000 EVMs.

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