EC releases techincal SOPs to verify functioning of EVMs used in polls

The Election Commission on Tuesday released the technical standard operating procedure to be followed while checking and verifying the functioning of the electronic voting machines used after the declaration of election results. The process will allow candidates who get the second and the third highest votes in a parliamentary or assembly constituency to check and verify for themselves the firmware of the EVMs used in the polling was not tampered with. In this process, the candidates, EC officials and the EVM manufacturers will essentially conduct a mock poll on the EVMs of the candidates’ choice. Therefore it is not possible to alter the firmware of the EVM unit to favour any particular candidate or to bias the result of an election in favour of any candidate at any point of time,” the EC’s public notice to all chief electoral officers, and the heads of BEL and ECIL said. If there are no petitions, ECIL and BEL must give the schedule for holding the C&V process within 10 days of confirmation of the no election petition status by the respective CEOs.