HYDERABAD: Setting the ball rolling for the conduct of panchayat elections in July, the state government has issued orders formulating the rules for the conduct of local body polls to elect members and sarpanches of gram panchayats, and members of mandal praja parishads and zilla praja parishads.
For the first time, Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) or Verifiable Paper Record (VPR) will be used for providing feedback to voters who will use electronic voting machines to cast their vote. Voter -Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) enables the voter to physically verify the vote cast by him/her in addition to keeping a physical record of the ballot enabling manual counting of votes in specified circumstances.
That means it is intended as an independent verification system for voting machines designed to allow voters to verify that their vote is recorded correctly, and to provide a means to audit the stored electronic results. The system consists of physical paper records of voter ballots as voters cast them on an electronic voting system.
“In the event that an election recount or audit is called for, the VVPAT provides a supporting record. The ‘voter-verified’ part of the VVPAT refers to the fact that the voter is given the opportunity to verify that the choices indicated on the paper record correspond to the choices that the voter has made in casting the ballot,” the government explained in the order.