New Delhi, March 21 – The Election Commission of India (ECI) announced on Saturday that the first randomization of EVMs and VVPATs for the upcoming Assembly elections has been completed in Assam, Kerala, and Puducherry.
The poll body had, on March 15, announced the schedule for the General Election to the Legislative Assemblies of Assam, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal, as well as bye-elections in six states.
EVM and VVPAT randomization is a secure, two-stage process conducted by the poll panel using specialized software to randomly allocate machines to constituencies and polling stations.
This prevents tampering and human intervention, ensuring fairness by keeping the location of the machine unknown until just before the election, witnessed by representatives of political parties.
Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) are distributed to their assigned polling stations through a two-stage randomization process.
In the first stage, EVMs are randomly allocated from district-level warehouses to Assembly constituencies. In the second stage, EVMs are randomly assigned from the Assembly constituency level to individual polling stations.
According to the ECI's directions, the District Election Officers (DEOs) in all poll-bound States/UTs must complete the first randomization of EVMs and VVPATs that have passed the First Level Checking (FLC).
"Accordingly, the first randomization of EVMs has been completed for the general elections of the states of Assam and Kerala and the UT of Puducherry, as well as for the bye-elections in the States of Goa, Karnataka, Nagaland, and Tripura, which are going to polls on April 9, 2026," the ECI said in a statement.
The First Randomization was done through the EVM Management System (EMS) by the DEOs in the presence of representatives of National and State Recognised Political Parties, it further said.
Lists of randomized EVMs and VVPATs have been shared with the representatives of all National and State Recognised Political Parties at their respective district headquarters.
"These EVMs and VVPATs will be stored in the respective Assembly Strong Room in the presence of the representatives of National and State Recognised Political Parties," the ECI stated.
"After finalization of the list of contesting candidates, the list of first and second randomized EVMs and VVPATs will be shared with all the contesting candidates also," it added.