All the polling stations of Assam will have Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) system during the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Mukesh Chandra Sahu said on Wednesday.
He also said that the VVPAT slips will be counted along with the votes punched into the EVM from randomly selected polling stations and tally with the counted votes.
A VVPAT device is a printer attached to the Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) that provides a slip containing the name and symbol of a party candidate for whom a person has voted.
The VVPAT devices allows voters to verify that their vote was cast correctly and to detect possible election fraud or malfunction.
Sahu also said that awareness campaign on use of VVPAT device has started across the state and voters have started participating in mock voting to familiarize themselves with the device.
Media Certification and Monitoring Committees (MCMC) have been formed at district and state level to stop spreading of paid news before and during the elections.
Sahu said the state level MCMC , with the CEO as the Chairman will attend to complaints of fake news and certify candidates’ advertisements so that they do not violate the model code of conduct and monitor that a candidate’s election expenditure does not exceed Rs 70 lakh.
He added that voters can apply online for correcting their names in the voter’s list or by downloading the Voter Helpline app.
Persons suffering from disabilities can also download a PWD App and request election personnel to visit them at home to enroll them as voters or for addressing further queries.