EVMs fall short, early polls to blame

After having announced that it’s going to be the country’s first all-electronic general election, the Election Commission is now f...

After having announced that it’s going to be the country’s first all-electronic general election, the Election Commission is now faced with a shortfall of nearly one lakh electronic voting machines (EVMs) that are yet to be supplied to it.

The pressure is in turn on Bangalore-based Defence Ministry PSU Bharat Electrical Limited (BEL) and Hyderabad-based Department of Atomic Energy’s ECIL, which are manufacturing as many as 1,500 EVMs per day to cope up with the additional demand of 60,000 and 40,000 EVMs, within March 15 deadline.

data-lazy-src="https://data.indianexpress.com/election2019/track_1x1.jpg" alt="" width="1px" height="1px" style="display:none;">

Each EVM costs Rs 10,000, and the EC’s requirement for the elections is 10.75 lakh for one lakh polling booths. ‘‘The larger share of the EVM manufacturing has been given to ECIL as it is not so pre-occupied with production of defence equipment as BEL is,’’ EC sources said.

Story continues below this ad

Both ECIL and BEL were supposed to deliver the EVMs in ready-to-use condition by January 15. The problem was compounded by the fact that the Vajpayee Government decided to have early polls. ‘‘We had placed the order by December. In normal course, we would have not had any problems,’’ sources added.

If that was not enough, some states queued up to cash in on the election fever by dissolving their respective assemblies, while the EC’s earlier order was based on requirement of EVMs in the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls in Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim and Orissa. Then Karnataka joined in the fray, rather late in the day.

Though EC officials insist that Karanataka had written to them even before dissolving the Assembly and it was factored into the poll calculations, sources said it tipped the balance putting pressure on the resource and the order that had been placed with BEL and ECIL.

A particular EVM can be used in two elections, but the EC could not avail this option as much as it would like to. Lot of EVMs are caught in litigation. For instance, in Kerala alone 12,000 EVMs cannot be used as candidates have filed petition against the figures polled on it in the last elections. Besides, the EC has to be keep about 10-15 pc of the requirement as reserve in case of default or malfunctioning. That the EC is bent on having the election entirely on EVMs was made clear even before T.S. Krishnamrthy took over as the Chief Election Commission.

Story continues below this ad

The EVMs are also tamper-free, and results can be declared in no time. During the first meeting of the state-level officials with the EC, former CEC J.M. Lyngdoh had directed the chief secretaries in December and Chief Election officers of all states to place orders for EMVs by December 31.