Kohima, 19 May (MTNews): Ahead of next year’s Lok Sabha election, the Election Commission of India has allocated EVMs & VVPATs to be used in all the 2315 existing polling stations in Nagaland, a DIPR report informed.
Nagaland will use the latest M3 model EVMs & VVPATs manufactured by ECIL (Electronic Corporation of India Limited), Hyderabad, a Public Sector Undertaking of the Ministry of Atomic Energy, Government of India.
A total of 3945 Ballot Units (BU), 4736 Control Units (CU), and 4252 VVPATs have been allocated to the state out of which 550 BUs, 1450 CUs, and 900 VVPATs are newly manufactured machines while the rest of the EVMs & VVPATs are the same machines used during the recently conducted State Assembly Election in February 2023, excluding those malfunctioned machines.
250 BUs, 1150 CUs, and 600 VVPATs of the newly manufactured EVMs and VVPATs have already reached the respective districts of the State and the remaining 300 for each BU/CU/VVPAT will be collected from ECIL Hyderabad by the month of June 2023.
With this allocation, the State will have BU 170 %, CU 204 %, and VVPAT 183 % of the total existing 2315 polling stations in the State which is sufficient to conduct the upcoming Lok Sabha 2024 elections.
The Office of CEO Nagaland has also tentatively scheduled to conduct Workshop on First Level Checking of EVMs & VVPATs for the District Election Officers/Returning Officers/Assistant Returning Officers in the last week of September to sensitize and equip the officers for handling and management of the EVMs & VVPATs.
According to the DIPR report, the actual FLC (First Level Checking) of all the EVMs & VVPATs shall be conducted by the authorized Engineers of the manufacturers of EVMs & VVPATs in the month of October to keep ready for use in the election. FLC of EVMs and VVPATs is done to clean, visual inspection, functionality test check, and dummy symbol loading in the VVPATs in the presence of the representatives of the recognized political parties, to ensure that all the components of the EVMs and VVPATs are original and functional.
After the FLC of EVMs and VVPATs is completed, the process of the Demonstration and Awareness campaign shall be carried out in all the polling stations by a designated team to sensitize the voters about the use of EVMs and VVPATs during elections.