Mock voting in Rajasthan’s Alwar district to create awareness about EVM, VVPAT

The Alwar district administration is conducting mock polling across all the 11 constituencies to make voters aware about how the electronic voting machine (EVM) and voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) work.

The activity began on October 1 and will end on November 14. Till Thursday evening, more than 600,000 people had cast their votes in this awareness activity, said Ansh Deep Ralh, Alwar Zila Parishad’s chief executive officer and in charge of the SVEEP (systematic voters’ education and electoral participation) activities in the district.

There are 2,697 polling booths in Alwar district. The mock voting exercise had been done at 2,292 booths until Thursday evening.

“The mock voting is held in two, four-hour shifts – 8am to noon, and 2pm to 6pm – from Monday to Friday. We have given five EVMs to each constituency. Every day, 10 polling booths are covered in each Assembly segment,” Ralh added.

There are 2.5 million voters in the district. The polling percentage in the 2013 assembly elections was 76.25%. When the state goes to polls on December 7 this year, the target is 85% in Alwar.

“VVPAT is being used to instil a sense of confidence among voters – they can verify their vote by seeing the slip that will destroy itself in seven seconds,” the officer said.

He added that during the mock polling, the main objective is to impart hands-on training about the working of EVM and VVPAT to all voters. “People are mobilised through booth awareness groups at each booth,” Ralh said.