Centre clears proposal to buy VVPAT-enabled voting machines
The Government has agreed to release Rs. 3,000 crores to buy these machines- a decision, coming amid a raging debate kicked up by the opposition over the possibility of EVMs being tampered with.
According to reports, Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi had last year written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for funds to buy Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail machines.
In 2013, the Supreme Court said that the Election Commission must introduce VVPATs and asked the EC and the Centre last week to explain the delay in switching to the new machines.
The machines are designed in such a way that when a button is pushed to choose a candidate, a slip of paper shows the party symbol of the candidate selected
After the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, in which the BJP recorded a landslide victory, Opposition parties moved the the top court seeking its intervention for the use of only VVPATs in all elections. They said if this is not done, polling should be held through the ballot paper system.
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