Ferrying voting machines to mountains and tropical areas in Indian elections is a Herculean task

NEW DELHI (AP) — From the Himalayan mountains to the tropical Andaman Islands, Indian officers are utilizing helicopters, buses, vans, boats, donkeys, and mules to hold digital voting machines for India’s gigantic nationwide elections.

Election officers are touring via jungles and snow-covered mountain tracks, even wading via rivers to arrange polling stations in tents, delivery containers, and faculty buildings in distant areas.

The huge seven-phase election on the earth’s most populous nation of over 1.4 billion individuals began final week and can conclude on June 1. Practically 970 million voters — greater than 10% of the world’s inhabitants — will elect 543 members to the decrease home of Parliament for 5 years in the course of the staggered elections.

The votes will likely be counted on June 4.

4 donkeys lugged the voting machines to Kottur hills within the Dharmapuri parliamentary constituency in Tamil Nadu state in southern India the place the first part of voting was held Friday.

In West Bengal state, nonetheless, the officers couldn’t use mules to succeed in Srikhola, a distant village at 6,400 toes (1,950 meters) above sea stage. In February, the forest division banned mules in Singalila Nationwide Park to forestall the spreading of viral illnesses within the wildlife sanctuary. They took the assistance of porters to hold machines to the polling heart.

India moved from conventional poll papers to digital voting machines over 20 years in the past. An individual must press the button in opposition to the identify of the candidate or the social gathering image flashing on the machine’s display to solid a vote.

The social gathering symbols vary from a lotus to a hand, bow, arrow, stress cooker, hammer, sickle, kettle, balloon, and torch.

An digital voting machine has a poll unit, a management unit for an official to make sure a voter can vote solely as soon as, and a voter verifiable paper audit path unit, generally known as VVPAT, which produces a paper slip to confirm the vote if challenged.

Opposition events, together with the Congress and the Communist Celebration of India, have demanded a return to paper ballots for casting votes. Their leaders have blamed their sequence of defeats on the hand of the Bharatiya Janata Celebration on the manipulation of the voting machines.

They’ve petitioned India’s Supreme Courtroom however remained unsuccessful to date.

The Election Fee of India says its voting machines aren’t pc managed; they’re standalone machines and never linked to the web or another community at any cut-off date. Subsequently, the fee says, there isn’t a likelihood of hacking by distant gadgets.