The Indian Election Commission has announced the purchase of 70,000 electronic voting machines for the upcoming Lok Sabha  elections in West Bengal.

Chief Electoral Officer Debashis Sen told PTI that the EC had requisitioned 70,000 EVMs from the Electronics Corporation of India. The new devices are reportedly capable of engaging in real-time monitoring to ascertain the percentage of polling during a specific timeframe. In addition, the machines will help clarify allegations of rigged elections by quickly providing an accurate printout of voting results.

"The step to introduce these new EVMs has been taken as part of updating of the polling process," explained Sen.

It should be noted that Bharat Electronics recently won a Rs100 crore order to supply over 100,000 EVMS for the 2009 general elections. The commission is set to deploy over 10.7 million voting machines in 800,000 polling stations across 543 constituencies. X

Check Out
PTI
Live Mint