The opposition parties aggressive campaign questioning the credibility of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) met with a flop show on Thursday when the Election Commission’s exercise to match the EVMs results with VVPATs slips cleared the test with accurate figures. A report in The Indian Express said that the ECI officials successfully matched 12,480 EVMs with their VVPATs till 10: 30 pm. However, there was only one case of mismatch during the entire process. It was reported from Andhra Pradesh where the ECI feels that it happened due to human error.

EC spokesperson Sheyphali Sharan said that the mismatch in one polling station in Andhra Pradesh was apparently due to human error. “It is being looked into by the EC,” the official said.

The most common error leading to mismatch is when a poll officer forgets to clear the mock poll data before the voting begins. The commission said that it will ascertain the exact reason for the error soon.

This was for the first time in a Lok Sabha election that results of EVMs were matched with VVPATs slips. This came after Supreme Court directed the ECI to randomly verify the five polling booth EVMs results with their respective VVPATs in every assembly segment to ensure transparency in the system. Accordingly, the ECI matched VVPATs in roughly 20,570 polling stations across the 542 Lok Sabha seats where polling was held between April 11 and May 19. Till Thursday at 10:30 pm, the ECI officials had completed the process for 12,480 polling stations. The ECI said that final report of 20,570 polling stations will be available on Friday.

Just a day ahead of the counting of votes, the opposition had launched a fiery campaign, questioning the credibility of EVMs. They had even submitted an MoU with the ECI demanding EVMs results and VVPATs slips should be counted first so that if there is a problem or a mismatch, all VVPAT slips can be counted. The opposition parties led by TDP chief and outgoing Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu had even filed a petition in the Supreme Court last month, demanding 100% VVPAT count. But their both demands were rejected by the ECI and SC.