New Delhi, March 31 – The Election Commission (ECI) said on Tuesday that the second randomization of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) has been carried out through the EVM Management System (EMS) by Returning Officers for the April 9 Assembly elections in Assam, Kerala, and Puducherry, as well as by-elections in Goa, Karnataka, Nagaland, and Tripura.
The list of first- and second-randomized EVMs and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (VVPATs) will also be shared with all contesting candidates, in whose presence the second-phase exercise was undertaken, according to a statement issued by the Election Commission of India (ECI).
The EVMs are allotted to their respective polling stations via a two-stage randomization process in the EVM Management System, the statement said.
In the first stage, the EVMs are randomly allocated from district-level warehouses to the Assembly Constituencies (ACs). In the second stage, EVMs are randomly allocated from the AC level to the polling station level, it said.
The ECI said that a similar second randomization of EVMs will also be done for the General Election to the Legislative Assemblies of Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, as well as for by-elections in the remaining two states, according to procedure, after the last date of withdrawal of candidature.
A total of 1,955 candidates are in the fray for the Assembly elections in two states and a Union Territory, along with by-elections in four states, scheduled for April 9. The poll panel said that 250 candidates withdrew their nominations after filing the papers earlier.
Among the states going to the polls, Assam, which has 126 Assembly seats, has 722 candidates in the fray. Kerala, with 140 seats, has 890 candidates, while the Union Territory of Puducherry, which has 30 seats, has 294 candidates contesting the elections.
As for by-elections, three candidates are in the fray for one seat in Goa. Karnataka’s two seats have 34 candidates, while six candidates each are contesting the bye-elections for one seat in Nagaland and one seat in Tripura.