Dharamshala: Political parties that lost out in the recent elections held for 5 state assemblies having raised questions about alleged manipulation of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM), the Election Commission of India has decided to deploy and ‘Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail’ to the voting process for the Bhoranj Assembly election, which is to be held on April 9, 2017.
“The Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) would be used along-with EVM machines in voting for bye-election for Bhoranj Assembly segment of Himachal, in Hamirpur District, which is scheduled to be held on 9 April, 2017,” a spokesperson of the Election Department of Himachal disclosed today.
He said VVPAT was a printer like machine attached to every EVM that allows voters to verify that their vote has been cast correctly. Once a voter presses button of his choice in the EVM, a printed paper appears containing the name of candidate and poll symbol so that he could verify it.
After the voter views the receipt it goes inside a container linked to the EVM after seven seconds. He said VVPAT ensures the transparency in the entire election process.
He said that the voter lists of the Bhoranj assembly constituency had also been made available on the website of the election department (http://ceohimachal.nic.in). Any person could also contact for more information on the toll free number 1950 of the department.
The seat was vacated following the demise of senior BJP leader, Ishwar Dass Dhiman in November 2016.
Dhiman had won this seat six-time in row since he was elected to the Vidhan Sabha for the first time in 1990.
There are 75,719 voters in Bhoranj Assembly segment including 37,514 male and 38,205 female voters.
He urged the voters to exercise their right to franchise on 9th April, 2017 from 8 AM to 5 PM. The result shall be declared on 13 th April.
Arvind Sharma is an award winning bi-lingual journalist with more than 20 years of experience.
He has worked with Divya Himachal, Dainik Jagran, Dainik Bhasker, Vir Partap, Ajit and PTI.
In 2010, he was conferred the Himachal Kesri journalism award. He reports on the Tibetan Government in Exile, politics, sports, tourism and other topics. He lives in Dharamshala.
