New Delhi: In a major electoral reform aimed at the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Union cabinet on Wednesday cleared the proposal to introduce paper trail machines for voting, which apart from being an innovative move, will also bring in transparency in the system.
According to official sources, Prime Minister Narendra Modi cleared the proposal to purchase 16,15,000 Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) units which will cover all the voting stations of the country, at a cost of Rs 3,174 crore over a period of two fiscals, i.e. the current financial year as well as the next one.
They further added that efforts are on to ensure that all the VVPAT units are procured by September, 2018.
These machines will allow a voter to confirm that his or her vote has actually gone to the party against which the button has been pressed, as a paper trail or a receipt will come out once the button is pressed. This slip will not be able able to be carried away by the voter, as it will drop in a box.
