Kolkata, Nov 13 (TIWN) For the first time, the West Bengal election commission is likely to use Voters Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) in the forthcoming Kolkata and Howrah Municipal Corporation polls on December 19.

Presenting the study me-ntored by IIT professor Sanjiva Prasad, retired IAS officer Jawhar Sircar said: “With heightened technology, the EVM’s potential to cr-eate mischief has increased manifold. Parallel counting of the VVPAT (voter verifiable paper audit trail) is the best way of ensuring that my vote has been reflected.” Sircar was Bengal’s ch-ief electoral officer in 1998 when the EVM was launched. Quoting the report, now available on https://www.reclaimtherepublic.co/report, Sircar said the Supreme Court had ordered introduction of VVPAT to assure voters of complete fidelity of their votes. “But, the ‘marked slips’ pop up for too briefly for a voter to verify. The EC is reluctant to tally the slips with EVM results because it deems the process ‘time-consuming’. However, it takes only 20 minutes extra.” The report suggests retaining VVPAT slips for a whole year after polls. CCE, which is chaired by retired Supreme Court judge Justice Madan B Lokur and has former CIC Wajahat Habibullah as its vice-chairman, has had the EVM’s vulnerability examined by national and international experts like Ronald L. Rivest of MIT, Cambridge, Alex Halderman of the University of Michigan and Philip B Stark of the University of California, Berkeley.