By IANS,
New Delhi : Over 11,000 electronic voting machines (EVMs) will be deployed to conduct the Nov 29 Delhi assembly elections.
“We are going to use at least 11,000 EVMs across the state and there will be a few hundred more as backup,” Uday Baxi, joint chief electoral officer of Delhi, told IANS.
“Every single booth will have an EVM but if the number of candidates in that constituency is more than 16 then the number of EVMs will be more. One EVM can register 9,999 votes,” said Buxi.
“We have not faced any situation when an EVM overflows with votes. Generally the number of voters in a booth is less than 9,999 and 100 percent of the enrolled voters do not turn up to vote,” he added.
Baxi said the EVMs have been procured from two government companies – Electronics Corporation of India (ECIL) of Hyderabad and Bharat Electricals Limited (BEL) of Bangalore. Every EVM costs around Rs.6,000.
“Our EVMs are very sturdy and can be used many times. But we are going to train thousands of people to handle them,” he added.
An EVM consists of two units – a control unit and a balloting unit. The control unit is with the polling officer and the balloting unit is placed inside the voting compartment.
Instead of issuing a ballot paper, the polling officer in-charge of the Control Unit will press the ballot button. This will enable the voter to cast his vote by pressing the blue button on the balloting unit against the candidate and symbol of his choice.