New Delhi: In the scenario elections of both the Lok Sabha as well as state assemblies are conducted simultaneously, Rs. 4,500 crores would be needed to procure electronic voting machines and paper trail machines, a report by the Law Commission said.

Under the requirement for such polls, there would be a need to set up around 10,60,000 polling stations in the coming 2019 general elections, as per estimation of Election Commission, the report said.

“It (EC) further informed that as of now there is a shortfall of about 12.9 lakh ballot units, 9.4 lakh control units and about 12.3 lakh VVPATs (voter-verifiable paper audit trail machines or paper trail machines) if simultaneous elections are to be held,” the report read.

As per the details, a single electronic voting machine comprises a control unit (CU), a ballot unit (BU) and a VVPAT at a cost of about Rs. 33,200.

 “Thus, the EC has informed that an expenditure of about Rs. 4,555 crore will be incurred on procurement of EVMs for an imminent simultaneous election,” the draft report read.

Even if take the average shelf life of about 15 years for each EVM, the Law Commission said that as per the prevailing rates, Rs. 1751.17 crore would be required to conduct of the second simultaneous elections in the year 2024 and Rs. 2017.93 crore for the third simultaneous elections in the year 2029 to procure EVMs.

“Thereafter, Rs. 13,981.58 crore will be required for procuring new EVMs for the proposed simultaneous elections in 2034,” it said.

The expenditure has been calculated as per the prevailing rates, the Election Commission said.

If the proposed Lok Sabha and assembly polls are held together in a simultaneous way, there is no need for extra expenditure besides an additional EVM for each polling station all over the country apart from election material such as stationary.

The draft report further said that if the polling stations are of large size, then additional polling staff will also be required in view of an additional EVM.

There has been much hype over the issue of conducting simultaneous elections for Lok Sabha as well as Assembly. The idea came up first by the ruling BJP at the center. There have been many efforts in this regard, but speculation is still alive due to the fact that no such announcement has been made so far by the central government. There is a need of clarification in this regard.

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