The Hindu Business Line : BEL all set to meet deadline for voting machines supply

Hundreds of huge silvery boxes stand neatly stacked along the green-lined pathways deep inside the Mass Manufacturing Facility at Jalahalli, Bangalore. Marked with large labels for election `duty' the aluminium cases are all set to carry off the electronic arbiters of the nation's destiny in the next few weeks.

The air is quiet and unhurried while the Bangalore plant of the defence PSU works away to meet its New Year order. It has to despatch 60,000 electronic voting machines (EVMs) to the Election Commission by March 31. When that is done, the 50-year-old BEL would have made over five lakh of the voting gadgets that have now become so crucial to the largest democracy.

"Normally we need about 10-12 weeks' turnaround time to complete an order of this size," said Mr N.N. Simha, General Manager, Export Manufacturing Unit, that makes the EVMs and a range of other devices. "Till December 31 last, BEL has supplied 4.47 lakh of these machines and we are now working on the January order." These will be directly sent to the polling authorities in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Delhi, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Bihar and Jharkand.

Each machine takes in about 3,000-4,000 votes that are cast in a booth but has a much larger capacity than that. The EC wants to use them extensively across 543 constituencies and have separate machines in the case of simultaneous polls to the Assembly and Lok Sabha.

Introduced in the late 1990s, the machines have come to stay, Mr Simha said. Each machine records six votes per minute, at a speed far greater than conventional manual sealing and casting of ballot papers. Having been tested widely during various elections, they are rugged, tamper-proof, user-friendly, give accurate results and just do not allow any vote to go waste. The results come at the press of a button but are taken only on the counting day and save hours and hours of counting time and personnel. Not to think of the tonnes of ballot paper they save, although there is provision for a backup paper audit trail in extraordinary situations that call for proof. But above all, e-voting means that there can be no booth-capturing.

BEL and Hyderabad based ECIL, another public enterprise, equally share the task of meeting the EC's requirement, which is to shortly total a million voting machines. The EVMs are unique as they come from the only country that uses them and on such a scale, according to Mr Simha. Eighty per cent of the gadget is indigenous, but for the main semiconductor and the chip in it.

This civilian job should give the Rs 2,600-crore BEL a business of over Rs 200 crore this fiscal. The company is now looking beyond the shores at four major markets including the US, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Europe. "There is tremendous interest in other countries about our EVMs. We have developed models for four countries and have reached the qualification rounds. The customised models are being examined by their authorities".

The export designs, though, would differ with use. The US, for example, wants six choices such as for the Senate, the States and the referendum. In the domestic version, you have just one choice," Mr Simha said. "But none of them can match the Indian voting pattern with its 65-crore eligible voters."

The big time for EVMs would come when village panchayats and local bodies use them in their elections, as also trade, student unions and all bodies that hold elections. "We will be making voting machines for all of them."