Cong wants paper trail in EVMs

The process to update the electoral roll of the Mira Bhayandar Municipal Corporation (MBMC) initiated by the State Election Commission (SEC) has elicited an interesting response from local citizens and politicians.

Till the last day of submission on Thursday (July 6) the commission received a total of 404 objections, most pertaining to wrong listing of names in a different panel. Owing to large scale errors and duplications, around 11,000 incorrect entries had to be deleted from the supplementary draft electoral, prompting the local Congress unit to register its disapproval towards the use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) without paper trial units in the civic elections scheduled to be held in August this year.

In his letter to the New Delhi-based, Chief Electoral Officer, district Congress president Anil Sawant has reiterated the demands for conducting the elections with VVPAT (voter verifiable paper audit trail) – an independent gadget attached to EVM machines which allows voters to verify if their vote has gone to the intended candidate.

"Going by the dubious track record of the administration in ensuring error free arrangements, it is necessary to use VVPAT to ensure 100 percent transparency.,” Sawant said.

Meanwhile the district election machinery has made elaborate arrangements to verify the authenticity of each objection received in context to errors in the draft voter roll, following which the final list will be released on 20, July after necessary corrections, if needed, officials said.