The Election Commission of India (ECI) has clarified before the Supreme Court that all three units of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) – ballot unit, control unit, and VVPAT – have their own microcontrollers which are sealed after the polling is over. This clarification was provided in response to a batch of petitions seeking 100% verification of EVM votes with their Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips. The ECI also confirmed that the microcontrollers used in the poll process are “one-time programmable” and cannot be changed later. The top court had earlier ordered the ECI to increase the VVPAT slips from one EVM per Assembly constituency to five and issued guidelines for mandatory verification of VVPAT slips from randomly selected polling stations after completing the final round of counting votes recorded in EVMs.
