Election Commission gets ISI report on counting VVPAT slips, decision soon

The Election Commission had earlier rejected demands that 30 per cent of the VVPAT slips should be counted.

The Election Commission will soon decide the proportion of voter verifiable paper audit trail slips that would be counted in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) that was mandated to carry out a study on the sample size of the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips has submitted its report, the election body said in a statement on Friday.

A view of an Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) and Voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT), at DM office, in Ghaziabad on March 14. (HT File Photo)

The report was presented by Prof. Abhay G Bhatt, who heads ISI’s Delhi centre.

Opposition parties have been asking the EC to ensure that 50 per cent of the Electronic Voting Machines, or EVM votes should be matched and cross-checked with VVPATs slips.

At present, the Election Commission matches the VVPAT slips for only one polling booth in each constituency.

The Election Commission had earlier rejected demands that 30 per cent of the VVPAT slips should be counted. It had then argued that counting paper slips for a third of the country’s 87 lakh electors would be a logistical nightmare.

Many opposition parties claim that EVMs are susceptible to tampering and wanted that the government go back to use of paper ballots.

The Election Commission said it had engaged the Indian Statistical Institute to systematically analyse and scientifically examine the issue of VVPAT Slip verification with electronic count of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). Statisticians at the top institute were asked to arrive at “mathematically sound, statistically robust and practically cogent solutions” to the issue of a number/percentage of VVPAT slip counts to done during the elections.