EC moves underway to scrap 1,100 EVMs

The Election Commission has taken a decision to scrap its 1,100 electronic voting machines after failing use them.
EC officials said Tuesday that left unused the EVMs went out of order. 
An EC meeting on Tuesday took the decision to scrap the EVMs after getting them tested by an expert from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, acting EC secretary Helal Uddin Ahmed told New Age.
He said that the EVMs were made by BUET and Bangladesh Machine Tools Factory in 2009 and 2012.
Only a handful of the EVMs were used in the Chittagong mayoral election in 2010 on an experimental basis.
Helal said that the meeting also discussed that the EC had no preparations to use the EVMs in the next general election.
It also discussed the possibility of using some of the EVMs in some local government elections on experimental basis.
After detecting technical flaws in the EVMs during their limited use in local elections in 2013, he said, the EC stooped their use in polls.
The flaws could not be rectified due to differences in opinion over the issue between the EC and BUET, said EC officials.
In 2016, the EC formed a 19-member technical review committee with Jamilur Reza Chowdhury as its adviser and entrusted it to check the EVMs.
Out of 1,230 EVMs, bought in three phases between 2009 and 2012, the EC could never use 130 EVMs due legal complications, said officials.
The 130 EVMs were bought by the EC from the BUET in the first phase at a cost of Tk. 14.04 lakh.
In the second phase it bought 400 EVMs from BUET at a cost of Tk. 1.28 crore while the remaining 700 EVMs were bought in the third phase from the BMTF at a cost of Tk 3.25 crore.
EC officials said that lack of proper maintenance also threw the EVMs out of order.
They squarely blamed the tussles between BUET and the EC for the situation. 

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net