EVM-VVPAT match: No aberration detected at 75 polling stations in Nanded

Nanded (Maharashtra) : The district administration on Wednesday confirmed that no disparities were detected between electronic voting machines (EVMs) and voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) slips at a mandatory verification at 75 polling stations. This, as per the Election Commission of India guidelines, comprises 30 centres for the Lok Sabha by-election and 45 for the assembly poll.

The development came at a time when the opposition has raised questions on the EVMs and blamed them for helping the BJP-led Mahayuti bag a landslide victory in the recently concluded assembly poll.

On Sunday, Nanded collector Abhijit Raut termed the post-election verification as an important exercise in maintaining electoral transparency and accuracy. "This routine process ensures that the votes recorded on EVMs perfectly match the VVPAT slips, reinforcing the public's trust in the system."

The selection of polling centres was done through a lottery system in the presence of candidates' representatives, Raut said, adding senior govt officers from different states, acting as election observers, supervised the process. "At each selected polling station, five randomly chosen VVPAT slips were counted manually and matched with the EVM results."

For the assembly election, five polling centers from each of the nine constituencies in the district were randomly drawn. These included ZP Primary School in Nichepur (Kinwat), Safa Urdu Primary School (Nanded South), and Gandhi National Hindi School (Nanded South).

For the parliamentary by-election too, five polling centers had been selected from each of these six assembly segments under Nanded Lok Sabha constituency. Among these, some selected were Rashtramata School (Nanded North) and Water Supply Office (Nanded South), and even Takali School (Degloor).

The Nanded Lok Sabha bypoll were held along with the Assembly election, as the present Congress MP Vasant Chavan was no more.