Maharashtra assembly elections: VVPATs, more booths and Rs 900 crore bill

MUMBAi: The state government has made a budget provision of Rs 900 crore for the conduct of the assembly election, an over 100% increase from the Rs 421 crore in 2014.


A budget provision of Rs 841 crore was made for the recently concluded election to the Lok Sabha.

A senior official said there were several reasons for the cost of conducting an election going up, such as the use of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT), the increase in the number of polling stations and a rise in the transportation cost.

"This is the first assembly election in which VVPAT will be used, due to which the time taken to cast a vote has gone up, and so to ensure that there is no crowding at one polling station, we have increased the number of polling booths. This in turn has increased the manpower and other facilities needed," an official said.

The expenditure for conducting the Lok Sabha election is made by the state and is later reimbursed by the Centre, while the expenditure of the state assembly election is borne by the state government.

This year, there will be 96,654 polling booths across the state. The number of polling booths in 2014 were 91,329, which means there has been an increase of 5,325 booths.

The increase in the number of booths is also attributed to the increase in the number of voters. As per the ECI guidelines, there should be one booth per 1,500 voters. The number of voters this year is 8.9 crore, nearly 60 lakh more than the figure in 2014.

Chief electoral officer (CEO) Baldev Singh said that the ECI would be sending two special expenditure observers in the state to keep an eye on the expenses made during the code of conduct period. "Even during the Lok Sabha election special expenditure observers were sent to the state. They are coming on the account of the expenditure sensitive constituencies in the state, especially in Mumbai," Singh said.

A total of 1.8 lakh EVMs will be required in the state for the election, besides 1.3 control units and 1.35 lakh VVPATs.

A total of 1.38 lakh police personnel will be palced on election duty. There will be presence of the central police force in the state during the election period.

There are a total of 2,747 polling booths that are categorised as critical in nature, most of these in Gadchiroli district, which has reported Naxal activity.

The police will set up 166 inter-state check nakas to stop entry of banned items in the state during the code of conduct.