In view of the conduct of the upcoming General Elections to Lok Sabha, 2024, the Election Commission of India has already allocated the required quantity of EVMs & VVPATs to be used in all the 2315 existing polling stations in Nagaland. The State will use the latest M3 model EVMs & VVPATs manufactured by ECIL (Electronic Corporation of India Limited), Hyderabad, a Public Sector Undertaking of the Ministry of Atomic Energy, Government of India. The total quantity of EVMs & VVPATs allocated is 3945 Ballot Units (BU), 4736 Control Units (CU), and 4252 VVPATs, out of which, 550 BUs, 1450 CUs, and 900 VVPATs are newly manufactured machines and the rest EVMs & VVPATs are the same machines used during the recently conducted State Assembly Election in February 2023, excluding those malfunctioned machines. With this allocation, the State will have BU 170 %, CU 204 %, and VVPAT 183 % of the total existing 2315 polling stations in the State which is sufficient to conduct the upcoming Lok Sabha 2024 elections. From the newly manufactured EVMs & VVPATs, 250 BUs, 1150 CUs, and 600 VVPATs have already reached the respective districts of the State and for the remaining 300 each BU/CU/VVPAT all necessary arrangements are being made to collect from ECIL Hyderabad by the month of June 2023.

As part of the preparedness for the upcoming Lok Sabha election in 2024, the Office of CEO, Nagaland has tentatively scheduled to conduct Workshop on First Level Checking of EVMs & VVPATs for the District Election Officers/Returning Officers/Assistant Returning Officers in the last week of September to sensitize and equipped the Officers for handling and management of the EVMs & VVPATs, In the month of October, the actual FLC (First Level Checking) of all the EVMs & VVPATs shall be conducted by the authorized Engineers of the manufacturers of EVMs & VVPATs to keep ready for use in the election. FLC of EVMs and VVPATs is done to clean, visual inspection, functionality test check, and dummy symbol loading in the VVPATs in the presence of the representatives of the recognized political parties, to ensure that all the components of the EVMs and VVPATs are original and functional.

After the FLC of EVMs and VVPATs is completed, the process of the Demonstration and Awareness campaign shall be carried out in all the polling stations by a designated team to sensitize the voters about the use of EVMs and VVPATs during elections.

(DIPR)