Statistical check of VVPAT gives hope to parties

Amaravati: The 21 political parties, which had filed a plea in the Supreme Court asking for at least 50 per cent of votes cast with EVMs be randomly verified against the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT), are pinning high hopes on the report submitted by the Indian Statistical Institute to the Election Commission of India.

In the wake of the Supreme Court's intervention, the EC engaged the ISI for arriving at mathematically sound, statistically robust and practically cogent solutions to the issue of a number/ percentage of VVPAT slip counts to done during the elections.

The report was presented by the head of ISI Delhi centre Abhay G Bhatt to Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora and Election Commissioners -- Ashok Lavasa and Sushil Chandra.

This has raised the hopes that more VVPAT slips will be examined to confirm the validity of EVM vote-counts during the national election, which begins next month.

The CEC said the report of the expert committee would be examined by it and necessary action will be initiated. The VVPAT is a paper slip generated by the EVM when a vote is cast.

These are visible to the voters who can see if their vote has been cast as per the button pressed.

However, barring the ones that are counted later, the other slips are kept in a sealed cover, only to be opened for tallying with EVM votes in case of a dispute.