{"id":40417,"date":"2024-04-09T06:26:56","date_gmt":"2024-04-09T00:56:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=40417"},"modified":"2025-10-13T12:03:44","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T06:33:44","slug":"vvpat-machine-in-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/vvpat-machine-in-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"Why VVPAT was Introduced in Indian Elections?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>What\u2019s in today\u2019s article?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Background<\/li>\n<li>What is a VVPAT Machine? How does it Work?<\/li>\n<li>Why did the Election Commission Introduce VVPATs?<\/li>\n<li>Why are VVPAT slips of only five polling booths randomly counted?<\/li>\n<li>Legality of VVPAT Machines<\/li>\n<li>Why are Political Parties demanding Widened Verification of VVPAT Slips?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Background<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>With the first phase of voting set to take place on April 19, the Supreme Court (SC) last week said that petitions seeking 100% verification of <a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/voter-verifiable-paper-audit-trail-vvpat\/\" target=\"_blank\">Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT)<\/a> slips would be taken up soon.<\/li>\n<li>In March 2023, the Association for Democratic Reforms had filed a petition before the Supreme Court.<\/li>\n<li>The petition said that to ensure free and fair elections, the tally from Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) should be cross-verified with the VVPATs.<\/li>\n<li>Also, to make sure that this process is carried out as fast as possible, ADR suggested the use of barcodes on VVPAT slips.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What is a VVPAT Machine? How does it Work?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The VVPAT machine is attached to the ballot unit of the EVM, and provides visual verification for the vote cast by a voter by printing a slip of paper with the voter\u2019s choice on it.<\/li>\n<li>This slip of paper, containing the candidate\u2019s serial number, name, and party symbol, is displayed in the machine behind a glass window. The voter is given seven seconds to verify her vote.<\/li>\n<li>Following this, the slip falls into a compartment underneath.<\/li>\n<li>No voter can take the VVPAT slip back home, as it is later used to verify votes cast in five randomly selected polling booths.<\/li>\n<li>The idea is that by allowing for a physical verification of the electronically cast vote, both voters and political parties have greater faith in the process \u2014 that their vote is being recorded correctly.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Why did the Election Commission Introduce VVPATs?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The idea of the VVPAT machine first emerged in 2010, when the Election Commission of India (EC), held a meeting with political parties to discuss how to make the EVM-based polling process more transparent.<\/li>\n<li>After a prototype was prepared, field trials were held in Ladakh, Thiruvananthapuram, Cherrapunjee, East Delhi, and Jaisalmer in July 2011.<\/li>\n<li>After fine-tuning the design, holding more trials, and taking feedback from political parties, an EC expert committee approved the design in February 2013.<\/li>\n<li>Later that year, the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961 were amended to allow for a printer with a drop box to be attached to the EVM.<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>VVPAT was used for the first time in all 21 polling stations of the Noksen Assembly constituency of Nagaland in 2013<\/strong>, after which the EC decided to introduce VVPATs in a phased manner.<\/li>\n<li>By 2017, there was 100% adoption of VVPATs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Why are VVPAT slips of only five polling booths randomly counted?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The EC determine what percentage of VVPAT machines\u2019 slips need to be counted to verify the accuracy of an election.<\/li>\n<li>In 2018, the EC asked the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) to come up with a \u201cmathematically sound, statistically robust and practically cogent sample size for the internal audit of the VVPAT slips with electronic result of EVMs\u201d.<\/li>\n<li>In February 2018, the EC mandated the counting of VVPAT slips of one randomly selected polling station per Assembly constituency.<\/li>\n<li>This was increased to five polling stations per Assembly seat, following a Supreme Court judgment in April 2019 on a petition filed by TDP leader Chandrababu Naidu.<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>five polling stations are selected by a draw of lots by the Returning Officer concerned<\/strong>, in the presence of candidates\/ their agents.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Legality of VVPAT Machines<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The VVPAT has been a subject of multiple legal cases, starting with <strong>Subramanian Swamy vs Election Commission of India (2013)<\/strong>.\n<ul>\n<li>In this case, the SC ruled that a paper trail was indispensable for free and fair elections, and ordered the government to provide funding for the roll-out of VVPATs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>In 2019, Chandrababu Naidu moved the SC asking for a minimum 50% randomized VVPAT slips to be counted.\n<ul>\n<li>The EC, however, argued that if this were to happen, results would be delayed by five to six days.<\/li>\n<li>The EC claims that it takes about an hour for election officers to match VVPAT slips with the EVM count in one polling station.<\/li>\n<li>The EC has also highlighted infrastructure challenges, including the availability of manpower, as obstacles to increasing the number of polling booths where VVPAT slips are counted.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Nonetheless, the court ordered the EC to count VVPATS in five polling stations instead.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Why are Political Parties demanding Widened Verification of VVPAT Slips?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Opposition parties continue to call for verification of more polling booths to make voting more transparent.<\/li>\n<li>They argue that the sanctity of a fair election outweighs the concern of delay in the declaration of results.<\/li>\n<li>Parties have called for anything from 50% to 100% verification of VVPAT slips.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>However, the EC has, thus far, been reluctant to do so. As per EC sources, the EVM and VVPAT concerns have been litigated and addressed by the Commission many times.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1. What does Voter Turnout mean?<\/h3>\n<p>In political science, voter turnout is the participation rate of a given election. This is typically either the percentage of registered voters, eligible voters, or all voting-age people.<\/p>\n<h3>Q2. What is meant by the Returning Officer?<\/h3>\n<p>A Returning Officer is responsible for overseeing election in one constituency may be two constituencies at the most. A Returning Officer is called so because he holds the election in the constituency and returns the result.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The VVPAT machine is attached to the ballot unit of the Electronic Voting Machine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":40418,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-40417","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-mains-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}