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Chief Electoral Officer of Nagaland, V Shashank Shekhar, has informed that given the conduct of the upcoming General Elections to Lok Sabha, 2024, the Election Commission of India has already allocated the required quantity of EVMs and VVPATs to be used in all the 2315 existing polling stations in Nagaland.
Giving an update on the status of EVMs and VVPATs, the CEO in a press release stated that Nagaland would be using the latest M3 model EVMs and VVPATs manufactured by ECIL (Electronic Corporation of India Limited), Hyderabad, a public sector undertaking of the Ministry of Atomic Energy, Government of India.
“The total quantity of EVMs and VVPATs allocated is 3945 Ballot Units (BU), 4736 Control Units (CU) and 4252 VVPATs, out of which, 550 BUs, 1450 CUs and 900 VVPATs are newly manufactured machines and the rest EVMs and VVPATs are the same machines used during the recently conducted State Assembly Election in February 2023, excluding those malfunctioned machines,” the release stated.
With this allocation, the state will have BU 170 %, CU 204 % and VVPAT 183 % of the total existing 2315 polling stations in Nagaland, which is sufficient to conduct the upcoming Lok Sabha 2024 elections, it stated.
From the newly manufactured EVMs and VVPATs, 250 BUs, 1150 CUs and 600 VVPATs have already reached the respective districts of the state and for the remaining 300 each BU/CU/VVPAT, all necessary arrangements are being made to collect from ECIL Hyderabad by June 2023, the CEO informed.
As part of the preparedness for the upcoming Lok Sabha election in 2024, the Office of CEO, Nagaland, is also tentatively scheduled to conduct a workshop on First Level Checking (FCL) of EVMs and VVPATs for the district election officers/returning officers/assistant returning officers in the last week of September, to sensitise and equip the officers for handling and management of the EVMs and VVPATs.
In October, the actual FLC (First Level Checking) of all the EVMs and VVPATs shall be conducted by the authorised engineers of the manufacturers of EVMs and VVPATs, to keep them ready for use in the election, it stated.
The CEO further stated that the FLC of EVMs and VVPATs comprises cleaning, visual inspection, functionality test check and dummy symbol loading in the VVPATs, in the presence of the representatives of recognised political parties, to ensure that all the components of the EVMs and VVPATs are original and functional.
After the FLC of EVMs and VVPATs are completed, the process of demonstration and awareness campaign shall be carried out in all the polling stations by a designated team to sensitise the voters about the use of EVMs and VVPATs during elections, it added.