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Next general election will be 'electronic': Gill

Buoyed by the Madras high court verdict upholding the use of electronic voting machines for the ensuing assembly polls, an upbeat Election Commission declared on Tuesday that India would vote electronically in the next general election.

"The commission has taken a historic step in holding the polls through EVMs in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Pondicherry and a few assembly segments in Guwahati in Assam," Chief Election Commissioner Manohar Singh Gill told reporters in New Delhi.

Noting that it was for the first time that the use of EVMs had been challenged in a court, he said the machines made by the "best public-sector undertakings ECIL [Electronics Corporation of India Limited] and BEL [Bharat Electronics Limited]" had been put to effective and extensive use over the last few years.

In the last parliamentary election in 1999, the machines were used in 45 Lok Sabha constituencies spread over 18 states and six crore [60 million] voters voted through them, Gill said. "In the next parliamentary election, it should be almost totally 'India votes electronically'."

He said the commission was already in possession of 300,000 EVMs and might go in for more machines depending upon the need as assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab were due later in the year.

PTI

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