The Election Commission of India has directed all the state governments that VVPAT shall be used with EVMs at all the polling stations in all the future elections to the Parliament and State Legislative Assemblies. The EC letter was received by Nagaland state chief electoral officer Abhijit Sinha on Thursday.
Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) is an independent system attached with the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) that allows the voters to verify that their votes are cast as intended.
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The VVPAT is attached to the Ballot Unit of the EVM and both the Ballot Unit and the VVPAT are placed in the voting compartment. The VVPAT has a small transparent glass window on it. When a voter comes to vote and presses the blue button on the Ballot Unit (BU) to vote for the candidate of his or her choice, the glass window on the VVPAT lights up and a printed paper slip containing the serial number, name of the Candidate and Election Symbol of the Candidate is visible to the voter behind the glass window. The voter witnesses all these details on the paper slip and is satisfied that his vote has been cast as intended.
The printed paper slip remains visible to the voter through the transparent glass window for seven seconds. After seven seconds, the printed paper slip gets automatically cut and falls into the sealed printed paper slip compartment or drop box of the VVPAT below followed by a beep sound. Thereafter the light goes off behind the glass window .The VVPAT is thus going to further enhance the transparency and verifiability in poll process.
To ensure free and fair elections, web-casting will be done in all those sensitive Polling Stations where internet connection is feasible and rest will be covered by videography by fixed cameras and micro-observers.
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In Nagaland elections, webcasting will be done at 555 polling stations and videography will be done at 1,601 polling stations whereas Micro Observers will be deployed at 1,010 polling stations.