MARGAO
Ahead of the Assembly elections scheduled in early 2022, the State administration received Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPATs) on Sunday.
In North Goa, the machines were being stored at boys hostel, Altinho while in South, they were stored at old Collectorate building.
Trucks carrying the EVMs which were brought from Karnataka were found parked at the Old South Goa Collectorate near the Margao Municipal garden throughout Sunday.
Armed policemen stood guard at the entrance of the old Collectorate building as labourers unloaded the consignment before storing the boxes on the first floor of the building. Traffic police personnel were also deployed outside the building to ensure there was no traffic related issues outside.
While a trailer was found parked right at the entrance to the building on Sunday morning, another truck made its entry to the site by evening, indicating that the entire lot of EVMs required for South Goa district has been unloaded and stored at the Collectorate buidling.
EVMs from Goa, including South Goa were transported to Bihar in the month of July and the election authorities had promised that new set of EVMs would be made available to the district election administration ahead of the 2022 election.
South Goa Additional Collector, Sanjit Rodrigues, IAS, while confirming the arrival of the EVMs for South Goa, said the EVMs have come from Karnataka.
“Since the South Goa district administration has received the EVMs, the election officials will now set in process to check the machines whether they are in operation mode from next week”, he said.
Sources said the requirement of EVMs for the forthcoming Assembly election scheduled in 2022 may go slightly up in view of the decision to rationalize the polling booths, capping the number of voters at the particular booth to 1000.
After rationalization, the total number of polling stations in South Goa now increases to 907.
