First randomisation of voting machines conducted in Karnal

Karnal, April 25

The Karnal district administration has stepped up its preparedness for the Lok Sabha election and the Karnal Assembly byelection and conducted first randomisation of electronic voting machines (EVMs) on Thursday.

It was conducted under the supervision of Deputy Commissioner-cum-District Election Officer, Uttam Singh, in the presence of Assistant Returning Officers (AROs) and other officials and representatives of various political parties.

Mahipal Sikri, Director, IT National Informatic Centre (NIC) and Kamal Tyagi, Joint Director, NIC, said the Election Commission of India had developed an online software for the purpose of randomisation to ensure transparency during the elections.

The randomisation of polling staff and EVMs was conducted for each election. This process involveed rearranging a sequential list using software to generate a randomised list, thus eliminating doubts about the list prepared by election officials.

Similarly, for the Lok Sabha elections and the Karnal Assembly byelections, the EVMs had been allocated in a random order, ensuring transparency in the process.

For the Lok Sabha elections, 15-15per cent of control units and ballot units, and 25 per cent of VVPATs had been reserved for each of the 1,147 polling booths.

Similarly, for the Karnal Assembly byelections, 20-20 per cent of control units and ballot units, and 30 per cent of the VVPATs had been reserved for each of the 223 polling booths.

Officials and representatives of various political parties were present there.