New Delhi, March 21: The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Saturday announced that the first randomisation of EVM-VVPATs for the upcoming Assembly elections has been completed in Assam, Kerala and Puducherry. The poll body had, on March 15, announced the schedule for the General Election to Legislative Assemblies of Assam, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal and bye-elections in six states.
EVM and VVPAT randomisation is a secure, two-stage process conducted by the poll panel using specialised software to randomly allocate machines to constituencies and polling stations. This prevents tampering and human intervention, ensuring fairness by keeping the machine’s location unknown until just before the election, witnessed by political party representatives.
Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) are distributed to their assigned polling stations through a two-stage randomisation process. In the first stage, EVMs are randomly allocated from district-level warehouses to Assembly constituencies. In the second stage, EVMs are randomly assigned from the Assembly constituency level to individual polling stations.
According to the ECI’s directions, the District Election Officers (DEOs) in all poll-bound States/UTs must complete the first randomisation of EVM-VVPATs that have passed the First Level Checking (FLC). “First randomisation of EVMs has accordingly been completed for the general elections of the states of Assam and Kerala and the UT of Puducherry as well as for the bye-elections in the States of Goa, Karnataka, Nagaland and Tripura, which are going to polls on April 9, 2026,” the ECI said in a statement.
The First Randomisation was done through the EVM Management System (EMS) by the DEOs in the presence of the representatives of National and State Recognised Political Parties, it further said. Lists of randomised EVMs and VVPATs have been shared with the representatives of all National and State Recognised Political Parties at their respective district headquarters. “These EVMs and VVPATs will be stored in the respective Assembly Strong Room in the presence of the representatives of National and State Recognised Political Parties,” the ECI stated.
“After finalisation of the list of contesting candidates, the list of first and second randomised EVMs and VVPATs will be shared with all the contesting candidates also,” it added.
IANS
