Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi has written to the Centre asking for funds so it can buy paper trail voting machines before the 2019 elections, multiple reports said on Sunday. The Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail machines provide voters with a printout of the choice they have made, so as to avoid any confusion.
Zaidi’s letter, dated March 22, was sent to Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, and asked that the money be disbursed immediately as the machines need to be bought by September 2018 in order for them to be used for next Lok Sabha polls, The Times of India reported.
He said the commission wanted to deploy the VVPAT machines along with Electronic Voting Machiens so that the “transparency of the voting process is enhanced” and “voter’s confidence in the process is further strengthened”. He added that the procurement “cannot be delayed any longer”.
The letter comes at a time when various Opposition parties have been complaining that the EVMs currently in use are rigged in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Though the Election Commission has vehemently and repeatedly denied this, everyone from the Congress to the Aam Aadmi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party has insisted that the machines were manipulated in the last set of Assembly elections.
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