The Hindu : National : EVMs will be checked ahead of Bihar polls

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National

EVMs will be checked ahead of Bihar polls

Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI: The Election Commission will introduce additional security measures related to electronic voting machines from the coming Bihar Assembly election. Also, a month before the Bihar polls all EVMs will be thoroughly checked in the presence of representatives of political parties.

This assurance was given to a Bharatiya Janata Party delegation, which met Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi and Commissioners V.S. Sampath and H.S. Brahma for over an hour here on Friday.

“The Commission assured us it would call an all-party meeting soon to discuss fears and apprehensions expressed about the EVMs as well as the practice of paid news and the increasing use of money power,” Ravi Shankar Prasad, who led the delegation, said later.

The BJP demanded that the Commission could introduce, on a trial basis in some constituencies, EVMs with a paper trail. “This technology is now available. Every time a voter presses the machine to cast his or her vote, a paper slip will be released by the machine recording his or her vote for a particular party. These slips can then be deposited in a ballot box and the results evaluated against addition of votes by the machine and the actual counting of votes polled on the slips.” This was an issue the BJP would raise the all-party meeting, Mr. Prasad indicated.

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