Bengaluru, (DHNS): Chief Electoral Officer of the state, Sanjeev Kumar, on Wednesday dismissed apprehensions about pooling in EVMs (electronic voting machine) and VVPATs (voter verifiable paper audit trail) from Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat.

Addressing reporters here, Kumar said that deployment of EVMs and VVPATs is done on requirement for a particular election and availability of the same in the state.

He was referring to reports in media on moving EVMs from Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh. "Since the introduction of EVMs for elections in the country, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has always moved EVMs from one state to the other, including movement into Karnataka and also out of Karnataka to other states. The present deployment is part of the well-established and existing system of deployment of EVM and VVPATs and, no exception has been made for Karnataka,'' Kumar said. Of the 85,650 machines required for the elections in the state, 67,650 will be brought from Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, while the remaining 18,000 machines will be procured from Tamil Nadu, Jharkand and Bharat Electronics Ltd. "There is no specific state-wise allocation or quota of EVMs and VVPATs for each state or union territory. A large number of machines are blocked due to election petitions in various high courts, which render them unavailable for deployment till the disposal of the petition. Due to limited number of machines, the ECI is required to move the available stock from state to state,'' he said.

The ECI is going to deploy 73,700 VVPATs for the Assembly elections in the state and most of the polling booths will have VVPATs. Due to the introduction of VVPATs, the requirement of civil staff will be increased by 20%. The civil staff requirement for the Assembly polls will be around 3.25 lakh persons, Kumar said.