EVM To Be Remodeled As Per International Standards: DG NIE

National Institute of Electronics (NIE) will incorporate the latest features in its locally manufactured Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) following the international standards to ensure its effectiveness for making the elections totally transparent and preventing any chance of rigging

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 20th Apr, 2021 ) :National Institute of Electronics (NIE) will incorporate the latest features in its locally manufactured Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) following the international standards to ensure its effectiveness for making the elections totally transparent and preventing any chance of rigging.

This was revealed by the Director General NIE, Abdul Majeed Soomro in an interview with APP on Tuesday.

The DG informed that the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST) has formed a five member committee under the chairmanship of Managing Director National Radio and Telecommunication Corporation (NRTC), Tofique Ahmed to prepare a proto-type of the EVM within a month, keeping in view the demands and requirements of Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).

The committee members included Joint Electronic Advisor (JEA), MoST, Principal Research Officer, NIE, Dr. Kamran Latif, Research Officer, NIE, Noman Ali and a representative from COMSATS University.

Soomro conveyed that the ECP being End-user has been requested by the ministry to provide demands/ requirements/specifications of the EVM to be indigenously developed.

Giving the historical perspective, the DG briefed that the first version of EVM was developed in the year 2015 when Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) decided to use this technology for conducting elections and floated a tender, inviting different companies for its production.

NIE participated in the tender along with many other international companies but the decision could not be made at that time. Since then, NIE had been working on this technology on its own along with incorporating the latest features in it as per the modern requirements.

The machine will be further improved as per recommendations of the committee and will be finally presented for trials, Soomro said.

The DG informed that the EVM comprised over three components (machines) including Ballot box which print the ballot paper and keep its record secretly, Vote Casting Unit which has electronic symbols and a Control Unit which will be used by ECP to operate the procedure and get the results.

Since the technology had been developed keeping in view the importance of data security and accuracy of election results, the results gathered through EVM can be double checked and verified through ballot paper printed within the machine which would eliminate any chances of rigging.

The EVM will show the total number of votes as well as the number of votes bagged by different political parties soon after closing of the voting process.

The software and hardware of EVM has been purely developed by this institute and its software security is encrypted data which cannot be accessed by others.

395/