Jaipur:The State Election Commission (SEC) has directed district election officers to keep 15% of the EVMs deployed for urban local body polls as reserve machines, with a system to ensure that a replacement EVM can reach a polling station immediately in case of a machine failure. The commission has laid down separate procedures for municipalities, municipal councils and municipal corporations, including advance preparation and deployment of reserve machines under the supervision of zonal/sector magistrates.In instructions issued on Aug 8, the SEC said the reserve EVMs would be drawn through randomisation from machines remaining after first-level checking and those earmarked for training. The machines will be prepared by technical experts or company engineers whenever they are required for deployment.For municipalities and municipal councils, the exact ward and polling station where a reserve machine may be needed will not be known in advance. The SEC said the machine will be prepared at the local-body level only when required, with the ballot paper of the concerned ward and the candidate set attached before it is sent to the polling station through the zonal magistrate.For instance, a municipality having 26 polling stations would get four reserve machines at the prescribed 15% rate. If a replacement is required at booth No. 2 in ward No. 5, the reserve machine will be prepared accordingly and dispatched to the polling station.The commission has prescribed a different arrangement for municipal corporations. A corporation with 2,200 polling stations, for example, would get 330 reserve machines, which would be distributed among its 150 wards, with each ward getting two or three machines. While the ward number would be fixed in advance, the exact polling station would not be known. For MPSV/MPMV machines, the reserve units would be marked A01, A02 and A03 for booth identification purposes and kept under the supervision of the zonal/sector magistrate.The SEC has also made mock polling mandatory whenever a reserve EVM is deployed. Polling agents’ signatures will have to be obtained during the mock poll.It said unused reserve machines from the first phase could be randomised, commissioned and deployed in subsequent phases. Similarly, SDMM/DMM of used MPSV/MPMV machines, after sealing, could be randomised and commissioned for later phases.
