What is the meaning of VVPAT? How does it work & add credibility to the EVM?

Recently due to Assembly Elections, you must have heard the havoc about the credibility of the EVMs or the electronic voting machines. Many political parties blame the government and its agencies for hacking the EVMs. So, to end this ruckus, the Election Commission brought VVPAT or voter-verifiable paper audit trail into the picture. Let us know what VVPAT is, how it works and how does it maintain the credibility of the EVMs. 

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What is VVPAT?

As per the definition of the Election Commission, VVPAT is the voter-verifiable paper audit trail or verified paper record (VPR). This is a method of providing feedback to voters using a ballot free voting system. It is helpful in the verification of the votes that is the voter using this machine can verify that their vote was cast properly. 

Recently during the last few days, EVM malfunctioning and mishandling and tampering of the EVM machines were much in the news. To solve these issues VVPAT comes into the picture. 

Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) Bangalore and Electronic Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) Hyderabad designed this machine in 2013. 

BEL is an organisation manufacturing military, civilian equipment and plants under the Ministry of Defence.

ECIL is an undertaking of the Department of Automic Energy.

How does VVPAT work & maintain the credibility of EVM?

Using a VVPAT, any voter can virtually see for 7 seconds the candidate he voted for. Also, a slip of paper is generated for every casted vote. 

As we informed in the article linked above, EVM has two units- a control unit and the balloting unit. The control unit is with the PO and the balloting unit is which is handled by the voter to cast his vote. It has party symbols and the names of the candidate on it. The voters press the button to vote for their candidate which in turn is linked to the VVPAT machine. It immediately generates a slip informing about the vote cast to the voter. The virtual presence of the vote can be seen just for 7 seconds after which it automatically cuts. The slip goes into dropbox where the beep is heard and the vote cast is acknowledged. 

The control of the VVPAT is only with the election officers. 

Therefore one can see that there are extremely less chances to no chances of the votes being wrongly cast or being manhandled by anyone. It was the question of the credibility of the EVMs that gave rise to VVPATs. 

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